Tim MacDonald
Developing engaging and performant web apps with Laravel & PHP
Melbourne, Australia
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Single-use Tests
Tests I write are usually written in Pest or Jest. I also usually commit them to a code repository - but not all automated tests should be committed. I wrote, what I consider to be an automated test, that was a single-use test. It served it's purpose and it'll forever be in my heart, but not in my repository.
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Fast database queries are not always better
You probably think fast database queries are good. You also probably think slow database queries are bad. On top of all of these "thinks" you have about database queries - there is a certain Laravel method that, if you’ve seen it, you probably think you understand…but there is a chance you don’t.
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Unique jobs and reserving resources on the queue
This post covers some interesting features of Laravel's queueing system. Forcing unique jobs and reserving resources across different job types.
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Introducing lazy loading prevention into an existing application
Laravel's new lazy loading prevention is fantastic, but depending on the size of your system might be hard to introduce. Here is an approach you might like to try out.
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Git rebase: A love story
A (not so lightning) talk about git rebase and the things it enables.
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Would you like fry with that? Using a HasOne over a HasMany relationship in Laravel
When you are working with a one-to-many relationship, it is sometimes the case that a particular instance on the "many" side of the relationship is flagged as unique and important to your system in some way.
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Follow the Eloquent road
Conference talk given at the 2020 LaraconUS / Online conference. Come for a journey as I show you down the path I've taken along the Eloquent road.
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Using Laravel's Policies and Route Model Binding without Eloquent
I always thought Laravel's Policies and Route Model Binding were only able to be used with Eloquent models. Turns out I was wrong
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Gracefully deprecating foreign keys for a polymorphic relationship
A "note to self" on how to best handle moving from a classic foreign key constrained relationship, to a polymorphic relationship in Eloquent, without impacting the end user.
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Avoid false positives by utiliting magic values in your tests
It can be very hard to spot a false positive within a test. So how do you avoid them?
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Sharing PHP-CS-Fixer rules across projects and teams
This tutorial will show you how you can setup a repo that contains all your rules, and easily share them with others.
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Rethinking Laravel's middleware argument API
String concatenation is the current way we can pass arguments to Laravel middleware - but what if there was another way
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Query scopes, meet action scopes
Action scopes are...well...just query scopes really, but instead of filtering they take an action. It's just a random name I've given them to differentiate them from regular filtering based query scopes in my projects.
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The case of the Laravel TestCase
Deep diving the Laravel TestCase and pushing it to the limit, and yea...that's the title I went with 🕵️♂️
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Dedicated query builders for Eloquent models
As my current project grew, so did my models. In a hunt for thinner models, I realised it was possible to extract model scopes to a dedicated query builder class. I'll show you how to do this, and a few things to keep in mind if you implement this refactor.
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Simple performance monitoring a Laravel Forge deployed application
Monitoring your web application's performance is key to ensuring you provide a good experience for your users. Here is a tip to help you see where your app is slow on a Laravel Forge deployed server.
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PHP be all like: that nonexistent class be cool
There are certain scenarios where PHP does not check or error if a class you reference does not exist. These are their stories. *dun-dun*
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Tips to speed up your PHPUnit tests
Having a fast test suite can be just as important as having a fast application. Here are some ways to make your test suite run faster.
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Global application settings
In applications it is often useful to have a way to store some global settings. This post outlines my approach using a Spatie package to manage the values instead of Eloquent.
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Giving collections a voice
Laravel collections have become an essential part of my codebases and I couldn't imagine working without them. I have found giving collections the voice of the problem domain makes for a much nicer API when compared to the generic collection methods.
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My feature test suite setup
I do love a good feature test suite. I especially like them to be fast and, most importantly, trustworthy! As my approach has matured, and become stable, I thought I'd share how I go about setting things up.
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Overriding Laravel Mix during testing in 5.8
Laravel's global mix helper function can be replaced during testing in Laravel 5.8. Here is why, and how, you might want to do this.
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Loading Eloquent relationship counts
There are several ways to load relationship counts on eloquent models. I'm going to explore the options and introduce you to a new one.
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Versatile response objects in Laravel
I've found that introducing dedicated response objects that can handle multiple response formats is a really nice pattern to cleanup my controllers
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Laravel Cashier: a helping hand
If you are creating a Laravel app with subscriptions via Stripe - Laravel Cashier might just be the helping hand you were looking for.
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Backup multiple sites and frameworks with Laravel Backup
Using Spatie's Laravel Backup package you can backup several sites on a server from a single app install, including Laravel apps and WordPress sites.
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Foreign key validation rule
A foreign key validation rule for the Laravel Validator that helps wrap up the 'exists' rule with a bit of syntactic sugar. Probably not fantastic to work with in the traditional fashion, but using the rule builder package...it looks gooooood!
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Enforcing valid data access from a form request object
A little trick I have been implementing recently to ensure that data accessed from a Laravel request object has first been validated.
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Writing a zero downtime deployment script
Having never written a shell script before, I thought I'd try and level up my dev skills by writing a simple deployment script for my website and my clients websites. The outcome: FlipIt™
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Fluent validation rules for Laravel
Laravel validation rules are great, but wouldn't it be awesome if there was a fluent interface for all the rules.
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Being a developer in regional Australia
If you're in the Riverina and wanna meet up to discuss all things software - join our local developer Meetup.