Smart Pills - Laravel

Laravel - New to Me

Last summer got involved in the linux operating systems part of my learning. I worked (rather unsuccessfully) on building an email server (sure, it worked but not very well) and then on installing Arch linux on my notebook. One false move with gparted (really, I hit the key by mistake!!) and I erased a few other operating systems.

Ooops.

Lost my dev versions of my websites. I could reinstall them but phalcon had moved on to a new version and there was a bug that I didn’t care to find and update, so I started looking around. Yii had a few kinks and and was more tightly bound to the database than I cared for. So next was laravel.

Hard Start

I had a hard time setting up the system for laravel. I can’t remember all the problems but one was finding out that I needed mcrypt (of course, I was rushing and didn’t read the docs super clearly… I just thought I had it already). Plus I was unfamiliar with Composer and it took a while to learn how to use it and the ramifications of a local vs global install.

Learning Curve

More study. I had to read more than do. Plus I now have a new home notebook which is 64 bit architecture, so that changes the environment: one environment at home, another at work.

Ooooh.

Then I came across Homestead and decided to figure that out to find a solution. More learning. It uses vagrant and virtualbox… more learning.

Rapid Progress

However, once I got past that and started to actually set up a small site, things started moving much faster. The routing is very clean and clear and simple in Laravel. Nice. The models are very easy to work with and controllers too. Laravel uses such nice syntax, it is easy to read and easy to remember. Things started moving faster.

The Smart Pill

Then I decided I wanted more. Markdown parsers? Just plug a line in composer, install, and modify a line in another file, and presto! Instant markdown parser set up in less than ten minutes.

File upload to Amazon s3? No problem! make a form (I use laravel’s blade template a lot and really enjoy it) and a route and already testing with uploads straight in the router. Move some code to the controller and before you know it my uploader is set up. There were numerous little tutorials scattered about and the actual code is pretty compact. Very nice.

Learning to Love

Now, I feel smart when I use laravel. Just like I took a smart pill. Good feeling. But I have to say I take my hat off to one source in particular that was outstanding. Dayle Rees in his book CodeBright really helped me down the path in a clear, easy-to-read and delightful way.

I am learning to love laravel more and more.