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25034 views · 4 years ago
Introduction to Gitlab CI for PHP developers
As a developer, you've probably at least heard something about CI - Continuous integration. And if you haven't - you better fix it ASAP, because that's something awesome to have on your skill list and can get extremely helpful in your everyday work. This post will focus on CI for PHP devs, and specifically, on CI implementation from Gitlab. I will suppose you know the basics of Git, PHP, PHPUnit, Docker and unix shell. Intended audience - intermediate PHP devs.
Adding something to your workflow must serve a purpose. In this case the goal is to automate routine tasks and achieve better quality control. Even a basic PHP project IMO needs the following:
* linter) checks (cannot merge changes that are invalid on the syntax level)
* Code style checks
* Unit and integration tests
All of those can be just run eventually, of course. But I prefer an automated CI approach even in my personal projects because it leads to a higher level of discipline, you simply can't avoid following a set of rules that you've developed. Also, it reduces a risk of releasing a bug or regression, thus improving quality.
Gitlab is as generous as giving you their CI for free, even for your private repos. At this point it is starting to look as advertising, therefore a quick comparison table for Gitlab, Github, Bitbucket. AFAIK, Github does not have a built-in solution, instead it is easily integrated with third parties, of which Travis CI seems to be the most popular - I will therefore mention Travis here.

Public repositories (OSS projects). All 3 providers have a free offer for the open-source community!


| Provider | Limits |
|---|---|
| Gitlab | 2,000 CI pipeline minutes per group per month, shared runners |
| Travis | Apparently unlimited |
| Bitbucket| 50 min/month, max 5 users, File storage <= 1Gb/month |

Private repositories


| Provider | Price | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Gitlab | Free | 2,000 CI pipeline minutes per group per month, shared runners |
| Travis | $69/month | Unlimited builds, 1 job at a time |
| Bitbucket| Free | 50 min/month, max 5 users, File storage <= 1Gb/month |

Getting started

I made a small project based on Laravel framework and called it "ci-showcase". I work in Linux environment, and the commands I use in the examples, are for linux shell. They should be pretty much the same on Mac and nearly the same on Windows though.
composer create-project laravel/laravel ci-showcase

Next, I went to gitlab website and created a new public project: https://gitlab.com/crocodile2u/ci-showcase. Cloned the repo and copied all files and folders from the newly created project - the the new git repo. In the root folder, I placed a .gitignore file:
.idea
vendor
.env

Then the .env file:
APP_ENV=development

Then I generated the application encryption key: php artisan key:generate, and then I wanted to verify that the primary setup works as expected: ./vendor/bin/phpunit, which produced the output OK (2 tests, 2 assertions). Nice, time to commit this: git commit &amp;&amp; git push

At this point, we don't yet have any CI, let's do something about it!

Adding .gitlab-ci.yml

Everyone going to implement CI with Gitlab, is strongly encouraged to bookmark this page: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/README.html. I will simply provide a short introduction course here plus a bit of boilerplate code to get you started easier.
First QA check that we're going to add is PHP syntax check. PHP has a built-in linter, which you can invoke like this: php -l my-file.php. This is what we're going to use. Because the php -l command doesn't support multiple files as arguments, I've written a small wrapper shell script and saved it to ci/linter.sh:
#!/bin/sh
files=<code>sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh | xargs</code>last_status=0
status=0
# Loop through changed PHP files and run php -l on each
for f in "$files" ; do message=<code>php -l $f</code> last_status="$?" if [ "$last_status" -ne "0" ]; then # Anything fails -> the whole thing fails echo "PHP Linter is not happy about $f: $message" status="$last_status" fi
done
if [ "$status" -ne "0" ]; then echo "PHP syntax validation failed!"
fi
exit $status

Most of the time, you don't actually want to check each and every PHP file that you have. Instead, it's better to check only those files that have been changed. The Gitlab pipeline runs on every push to the repository, and there is a way to know which PHP files have been changed. Here's a simple script, meet ci/get-changed-php-files.sh:
#!/bin/sh
# What's happening here?
#
# 1. We get names and statuses of files that differ in current branch from their state in origin/master.
# These come in form (multiline)
# 2. The output from git diff is filtered by unix grep utility, we only need files with names ending in .php
# 3. One more filter: filter *out* (grep -v) all lines starting with R or D.
# D means "deleted", R means "renamed"
# 4. The filtered status-name list is passed on to awk command, which is instructed to take only the 2nd part
# of every line, thus just the filename
git diff --name-status origin/master | grep '\.php$' | grep -v "^[RD]" | awk '{ print }'

These scripts can easily be tested in your local environment ( at least if you have a Linux machine, that is ;-) ).
Now, as we have our first check, we'll finally create our .gitlab-ci.yml. This is where your pipeline is declared using YAML notation:
# we're using this beautiful tool for our pipeline: https://github.com/jakzal/phpqa
image: jakzal/phpqa:alpine
# For this sample pipeline, we'll only have 1 stage, in real-world you would like to also add at least "deploy"
stages: - QA
linter:
stage: QA
# this is the main part: what is actually executed
script: - sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh | xargs sh ci/linter.sh

The first line is image: jakzal/phpqa:alpine and it's telling Gitlab that we want to run our pipeline using a PHP-QA utility by jakzal. It is a docker image containing PHP and a huge variety of QA-tools. We declare one stage - QA, and this stage by now has just a single job named linter. Every job can have it's own docker image, but we don't need that for the purpose of this tutorial. Our project reaches Step 2. Once I had pushed these changes, I immediately went to the project's CI/CD page. Aaaand.... the pipeline was already running! I clicked on the linter job and saw the following happy green output:
Running with gitlab-runner 11.9.0-rc2 (227934c0) on docker-auto-scale ed2dce3a
Using Docker executor with image jakzal/phpqa:alpine ...
Pulling docker image jakzal/phpqa:alpine ...
Using docker image sha256:12bab06185e59387a4bf9f6054e0de9e0d5394ef6400718332c272be8956218f for jakzal/phpqa:alpine ...
Running on runner-ed2dce3a-project-11318734-concurrent-0 via runner-ed2dce3a-srm-1552606379-07370f92...
Initialized empty Git repository in /builds/crocodile2u/ci-showcase/.git/
Fetching changes...
Created fresh repository.
From https://gitlab.com/crocodile2u/ci-showcase * [new branch] master -> origin/master * [new branch] step-1 -> origin/step-1 * [new branch] step-2 -> origin/step-2
Checking out 1651a4e3 as step-2...
Skipping Git submodules setup
$ sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh | xargs sh ci/linter.sh
Job succeeded

It means that our pipeline was successfully created and run!

PHP Code Sniffer.

PHP Code Sniffer is a tool for keeping app of your PHP files in one uniform code style. It has a hell of customizations and settings, but here we will only perform simple check for compatibilty with PSR-2 standard. A good practice is to create a configuration XML file in your project. I will put it in the root folder. Code sniffer can use a few file names, of which I prefer phpcs.xml:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
/resources

I also will append another section to .gitlab-ci.yml:
code-style:	stage: QA	script:	# Variable $files will contain the list of PHP files that have changes	- files=<code>sh ci/get-changed-php-files.sh</code> # If this list is not empty, we execute the phpcs command on all of them - if [ ! -z "$files" ]; then echo $files | xargs phpcs; fi

Again, we check only those PHP files that differ from master branch, and pass their names to phpcs utility. That's it, Step 3 is finished! If you go to see the pipeline now, you will notice that linter and code-style jobs run in parallel.

Adding PHPUnit

Unit and integration tests are essential for a successful and maintaiable modern software project. In PHP world, PHPUnit is de facto standard for these purposes. The PHPQA docker image already has PHPUnit, but that's not enough. Our project is based on Laravel, which means it depends on a bunch of third-party libraries, Laravel itself being one of them. Those are installed into vendor folder with composer. You might have noticed that our .gitignore file has vendor folder as one of it entries, which means that it is not managed by the Version Control System. Some prefer their dependencies to be part of their Git repository, I prefer to have only the composer.json declarations in Git. Makes the repo much much smaller than the other way round, also makes it easy to avoid bloating your production builds with libraries only needed for development.
Composer is also included into PHPQA docker image, and we can enrich our .gitlab-ci.yml:
test:	stage: QA	cache:	key: dependencies-including-dev	paths: - vendor/	script:	- composer install	- ./vendor/bin/phpunit

PHPUnit requires some configuration, but in the very beginning we used composer create-project to create our project boilerplate.laravel/laravel package has a lot of things included in it, and phpunit.xml is also one of them. All I had to do was to add another line to it:
xml

APP_KEY enironment variable is essential for Laravel to run, so I generated a key with php artisan key:generate.
git commit & git push, and we have all three jobs on theQA stage!

Checking that our checks work

In this branch I intentionally added changes that should fail all three job in our pipeline, take a look at git diff. And we have this out from the pipeline stages:Linter:
$ ci/linter.sh
PHP Linter is not happy about app/User.php:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'syntax' (T_STRING), expecting function (T_FUNCTION) or const (T_CONST) in app/User.php on line 11
Errors parsing app/User.php
PHP syntax validation failed!
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 255

**Code-style**:
$ if [ ! -z "$files" ]; then echo $files | xargs phpcs; fi
FILE: ...ilds/crocodile2u/ci-showcase/app/Http/Controllers/Controller.php
----------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 0 ERRORS AND 1 WARNING AFFECTING 1 LINE
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 | WARNING | Line exceeds 120 characters; contains 129 characters
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Time: 39ms; Memory: 6MB
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 123

**test**:
$ ./vendor/bin/phpunit
PHPUnit 7.5.6 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.
F. 2 / 2 (100%)
Time: 102 ms, Memory: 14.00 MB
There was 1 failure:
1) Tests\Unit\ExampleTest::testBasicTest
This test is now failing
Failed asserting that false is true.
/builds/crocodile2u/ci-showcase/tests/Unit/ExampleTest.php:17
FAILURES!
Tests: 2, Assertions: 2, Failures: 1.
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 1

Congratulations, our pipeline is running, and we now have much less chance of messing up the result of our work.

Conclusion

Now you know how to set up a basic QA pipeline for your PHP project. There's still a lot to learn. Pipeline is a powerful tool. For instance, it can make deployments to different environments for you. Or it can build docker images, store artifacts and more! Sounds cool? Then spend 5 minutes of your time and leave a comment, you can also tell me if there is a pipeline topic you would like to be covered in next posts.
9604 views · 5 years ago
Conferences are always looking for speakers - it can be hard to keep track of them all and the requirements they have. I wanted to put together this quick guide to make it easy for you to apply. Make sure to apply because as Wayne Gretzky said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”!!!

phpDay 2019

First we have phpDay 2019 which will take place on May 10 & 11 at Hotel San Marco in Verona, Italy. Some facts about this call for papers:
*Submission deadline: February 4, 2019
*Submit via: https://cfp.phpday.it/
* For more info on the conference: https://2019.phpday.it/
* Twitter: (@phpday)
* Speaker package includes: Full conference pass (jsDay + phpDay), speaker dinner the first night, lunch, reception and activities included in regular conference.
* For speakers remote to the Area: A refund of up to €200 for travel costs (or €500 from US or extra-EU), 2 complimentary hotel nights (+1 hotel night for speakers presenting multiple talks or US/extra-EU) and Taxi fare from/to the airport.
*In Submission: make sure your talk title and abstract define the exact topic you want to talk about and what you hope people will learn from the session.
*Talk Ideas: APIs (REST, SOAP, etc.), Architectures, Continuous Delivery, Databases, Development, Devops, Frameworks, Internals, PHP 7.x / PHP 8, Security, Testing and UI/UX.

ScotlandPHP

Next we have ScotlandPHP which will take place on November 8 & 9 at Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland.
*Submission deadline: April 22, 2019
*Submit via: https://cfs.scotlandphp.co.uk/
* For more info on the conference: https://conference.scotlandphp.co.uk/
* Twitter: (@scotlandphp)
* Speaker package: Full conference pass, lunch, receptions and activities included in regular conference.
* For speakers remote to the Area: Complimentary airfare/travel, 2 complimentary hotel nights and we'll pick you up and drop you off to/from the airport so you don't have to worry about it.
* Speakers will be provided with a projector, a wireless lapel microphone and a screen for their presentation (size depends on the room). Speakers should bring any equipment they need to connect to projectors (VGA). It is also suggested that you reduce your dependency on the in-house internet connection as possible. We will however provide HDMI and Mini Display Port connections for all speakers on request. If you need something different or your selected talk needs audio equipment just let us know. We'll work it out.
* Looking for talks and workshops (November 8th).
*Talk Ideas: Virtualization and environments, Javascript, Alternate PHP run-times, PHP internals, Development principles, Security, Mobile-first design, Testing (unit, functional, etc.), Version control, User Experience/Usability, Building APIs (REST, SOAP, whatever), Continuous Integration, Framework-related topics, and Professional development.

Global diversity CFP day

In 2019 there will be numerous workshops hosted around the globe encouraging and advising newbie speakers to put together your very first talk proposal and share your own individual perspective on any subject of interest to people in tech.
* Twitter: (@gdcfpday)
*Save the Date: March 2, 2019
*Register here: https://www.globaldiversitycfpday.com/?utm_source=scotphp

CoderCruise

Then there is CoderCruise which will take place on August 19-23. It's a cruise that takes off from Port Canaveral, Florida and goes to the Bahamas.
* Twitter: (@codercruise)
*Submission deadline: March 3, 2019
*Submit via: https://www.papercall.io/codercruise-2019
* For more info on the conference: https://www.codercruise.com/
* This is a polyglot conference so looking for speakers on a wide variety of languages (PHP, JavaScript, Java, Python, etc.) and on various tech topics.

PHP Conference Asia 2019

There is also PHP Conference Asia 2019, which will take place on June 24-25 at Microsot Singapore.
*Submission deadline: March 8, 2019
*Submit via: https://cfp.phpconf.asia/
* For more info on the conference: https://2019.phpconf.asia/
* Twitter: (@PHPConfAsia)
* Speaker package includes: Speaker package: Full conference pass, lunch, receptions and activities included in regular conference. We'll pick you up and drop you off to/from the airport so you don't have to worry about it. Speakers' dinner on the first evening of the conference (24th June 2019). Transport to and from the conference venue will be included
* For speakers remote to the Area: 2 complimentary hotel nights and
we can consider providing grants to partially cover the air-fare for speakers who might have financial difficulties. This is on a case-by-case basis.
* Speakers will be provided with a projector, a wireless hand-held microphone and a screen for their presentation. Speakers should prepare their slides in 4x3 aspect ratio. Speakers should bring any equipment they need to connect to projectors (HDMI). It is also suggested that you reduce your dependency on the in-house internet connection as possible.
*In Submission: Make sure your talk title and abstract define the exact topic you want to talk about and what you hope people will learn from the session.
*Talk Ideas: Virtualization and environments, Javascript, Alternate PHP run-times, PHP internals, Development principles, Security, Mobile-first design, Testing (unit, functional, etc.), Version control, User Experience/Usability, Building APIs (REST, SOAP, whatever), Continuous Integration, Framework-related topics, and Professional development.

Cascadia PHP

Another conference to apply to is Cascadia PHP, which will take place on September 19-21 at University Place Hotel & Conference Center in Portland, Oregon.
*Submission deadline: April 15, 2019
*Submit via: https://cfp.cascadiaphp.com/
* For more info on the conference: https://www.cascadiaphp.com/venue
* Twitter: (@CascadiaPHP)
* Speaker package includes: Speaker package: Full conference pass, lunch, receptions and activities included in regular conference. For speakers remote to the Area: Complimentary airfare/travel, 2 complimentary hotel nights and we'll pick you up and drop you off to/from the airport so you don't have to worry about it.
Speakers will be provided with a projector, a wireless lapel microphone and a screen for their presentation (size depends on the room). Speakers should bring any equipment they need to connect to projectors (VGA). It is also suggested that you reduce your dependency on the in-house internet connection as possible.
*In Submission: make sure your talk title and abstract define the exact topic you want to talk about and what you hope people will learn from the session.
*Talk Ideas: PHP internals, Version control, Framework-related topics, Building APIs (REST, SOAP, whatever), Mobile-first design, Professional development, Testing (unit, functional, etc.), Alternate PHP run-times, Development principles, Continuous Integration, Getting involved in the PHP community, User Experience/Usability, Technology at large, Security, Connecting to Different APIs, Development Tools, Virtualization and environments, Javascript, Modern hosting practices, Language Features, Databases, Refactoring legacy applications, Running/contributing to open source projects, AI and AR, and User Groups.

Nomad PHP

Last but not least - this is an ongoing call for papers. This is perfect if you want to present from the comfort of your office, home or really wherever you are. It’s via RingCentral meetings and will be live and recorded. This is for none other than Nomad PHP.
* Twitter: (@nomadphp)
* Deadline: Anytime :D
* Talk length: 45 - 60 minutes.
* Talks should be unique to Nomad PHP and not available in video format online.
* Talk should not be recorded or made available elsewhere online for at least 3 months following your talk.
* The talk will be featured on our page and promoted via social media.
* Speakers will receive a financial stipend.
* Upon being selected we will reach out with further details.
*Talk ideas: AI & Machine Learning, APIs, Containerization, Databases, DevOps, Documentation, Frameworks, Performance, Security, Serverless, Testing, Tools, Upgrading/ Modernization, and more.
*Submit here: https://www.papercall.io/nomadphp
Now that you have some information - make sure to apply to all of these options! Can't wait to see all of your awesome talks you present :D!
6742 views · 5 years ago
Custom extension to Laravel Application class

Hello folks! This post is for those of you using Laravel. This beautiful framework makes web development super-easy compared to most of competitors. In the heart of Laravel is the Application class, which is responsible for bootstrapping, registering services and also serves as a dependency injection container. What I do with my Laravel apps, is that I take a slight detour from the common path by adding a custom Application class. While this is not really necessary, I find this approach nice, and will try to share my thought below.

It's normal practice in Laravel world to build all kinds of objects like this:

$cache = app("cache");


I find it a bit confusing to call app("cache"") and expect a Cache\Repository instance as result. If I pass the result of this call to a function that requires a Cache\Repository as parameter, I will probably have a code inspection warning from IDE. Moreover, if I want proper autocompletion, I will have to add additional comment:


$cache = app("cache");


This is where a custom application class might be handy:

namespace App;
class MyApp extends Application
{
public function cacheRepository(): Repository
{
return $this->make(Repository::class);
}
}


This way I get a TypeError in case of a misconfiguration, and I have a type-hint which allows the IDE to recognize the return value. Bye-bye nasty comment lines and IDE warnings! I make a method per service, with type-hints, like dbConnection() or viewFactory() - works really well for me!

I also thought that, if I have a custom class, then all the custom setup that normally you have in bootstrap/app.php, should reside in that custom class:

namespace App;
class MyApp extends Application
{
public function __construct()
{
define('LARAVEL_START', microtime(true));
define("APP_ROOT", realpath(__DIR__ . "/../"));
parent::__construct(APP_ROOT);
$this->setUp();
}
private function setUp()
{
$this->singleton(
Contracts\Http\Kernel::class,
\App\Http\Kernel::class
);
}
}


Then your bootstrap/app.php becomes just this:

return new \App\MyApp;


The Laravel app() function will also return an instance of MyApp from now on. However, it's @phpdoc says it returns \Illuminate\Foundation\Application, so for better clarity, I also added my own accessor method:

namespace App;
class MyApp extends Application
{
public static function app(): self
{

$ret = parent::getInstance();
return $ret;
}
}


I tend to limit the use of global/static functions and methods, but sometimes it can be handy, and whenever I need an instance of MyApp, I just call MyApp::app(). The IDE wil be aware of the return type due to the type-hint, so I get everything I want for clean and clear development.

With your projects in Laravel, you may or may not want to follow this particular advice, but just be aware that extending a framework built-in classes for your team's comfort, is definitely something that can make your life easier. See you around, don't forget to leave comments!
11623 views · 5 years ago
Creating a Tiny Blog Management system in Laravel 5.7

Hey There,
I am expecting you are familiar with PHP. In this post I will be using the Laravel framework to create a small blog system. I am showing here very simple steps to create blogs, If you want this complete code then please message me.
What are major Prequisites for Laravel:
* PHP version >= 5.6
* Composer should be installed in system

Create a project with name tiny_blog with following command

composer create-project laravel/laravel --prefer-dist tiny_blog


enter into the laravel project

cd tiny_blog


create a migration file using following artisan command
<pre>php artisan make:migration create_blog_table</pre>
After this command you will found a new file created in database/migrations folder in your project, Just edit the file having 'create_blog_table' appended in its name

Now replace following code to create table schema with function up(), So now the method will look like following:

public function up()
{
Schema::create('blogs', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->integer('user_id');
$table->string('category');
$table->string('title');
$table->text('description');
$table->timestamps();
});

}


replace following snippet with down method, it will look like following:

public function down()
{
Schema::dropIfExists('blogs');
}


Its time to run the migration file we have created

php artisan migrate



After running,It will create the blogs table in database.Now time to create form and insert data into the table

Laravel itsef provide authentication , use following artisan command :

php artisan make:auth


Now start Larvel:

php artisan serve


it will start the laravel development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000


Now if you run that url the basic default ui will be created and login & register link you can see in Top right position of header

You can register and login now.this feature is provided by authentication module.
Now we need to create a controller for manage blogs with following command:

php artisan make:controller BlogController


will create a file namedBlogController.php in** app/HTTP/controllers** folder location

Now we need to create a Model also, use following command

php artisan make:model Blog


will create a file namedBlog.php in app folder location

Now in Controller we need to create a method for create blogs and available that method in Routes to access it via url. Just editroutes/web.php file and add the following line

Route::get('blog/create','BlogController@createBlog');

/create/blog/ will be url route that land on Blog Controller's createBlog method using get method.

Now before running this route just go to the app/Http/Controllers folder and Edit BlogController.php file and Add the createBlog method in that class as following

public function createBlog()
{
return view('blog.create');
}


This code will try to load the view from/resources/views/blog/create.blade.php

In Laravel blade is a template engine. As we had not created the view file yet, so we need to create a blog folder inside/resources/views/ folder then inside blog folder create a file create.blade.php with following form

@extends('layouts.app')

@section('content')
<div class="container">
@if ($errors->any())
<div class="alert alert-danger">
<ul>
@foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
<li>{{ $error }}</li>
@endforeach
</ul>
</div><br />
@endif
<div class="row">
<form method="post" action="{{url('blog/create')}}">
<div class="form-group">
<input type="hidden" value="{{csrf_token()}}" name="_token" />
<label for="title">Title:</label>
<input type="text" class="form-control" name="title"/>
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<label for="title">Category/Tags:</label>
<input type="text" class="form-control" name="category"/>
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<label for="description">Description:</label>
<textarea cols="10" rows="10" class="form-control" name="description"></textarea>
</div>
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Submit</button>
</form>
</div>
</div>
@endsection



Now we need to add a additional route to handle the post request on blog/create route, Just edit routes/web.php file and just add following line in last:

Route::post('blog/create','BlogController@saveBlog'); 


post route to handle the form post on route blog/create


Now create a method name saveBlog to save the user input data in the form
 public function saveBlog(Request $request)
{
$blog = new Blog();

$this->validate($request, [
'title'=>'required',
'category'=>'required',
'description'=> 'required'
]);

$blog->createBlog($request->all());
return redirect('blog/index')->with('success', 'New blog has been created successfully :)'); }


Notice This method is using Blog object that we don't know that where it comes from? , So to make above code working we need to include the model which we created earlier need to include in our controller file So use following code to include it before the class created.

use App\Blog;


Now following line shows that there is a method named createBlog in Model(app/Blog.php), but in actual it is not there:

$blog->createBlog($data);



So go to the file app/Blog.php and Edit it and inside the class add following method:

 public function createBlog($data)
{

$this->user_id = auth()->user()->id;
$this->title = $data['title'];
$this->description = $data['description'];
$this->category = $data['category'];
$this->save();
return 1;
}


Now the creation of blog task has been done , Its time to show the created Entries So just create a route blog/index in routes/web.php

Route::get('blog/index','BlogController@showAllBlogs');


get route blog/index to show all the created blogs by current user


Now just add a method in controller
public function showAllBlogs()
{
$blogs = Blog::where('user_id', auth()->user()->id)->get();

return view('blog.index',compact('blogs'));
}



This method requires to create a index view in blog folder , So create a file named index.blade.php in /resources/views/blog/ folder with following code

@extends('layouts.app')

@section('content')
<div class="container">
@if(\Session::has('success'))
<div class="alert alert-success">
{{\Session::get('success')}}
</div>
@endif
<a type="button" href="{{url('blog/create')}}" class="btn btn-primary">Add New Blog</a>
<br>
<table class="table table-striped">
<thead>
<tr>
<td>ID</td>
<td>Title</td>
<td>Category</td>
<td>Description</td>
<td colspan="2">Action</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
@foreach($blogs as $blog)
<tr>
<td>{{$blog->id}}</td>
<td>{{$blog->title}}</td>
<td>{{$blog->category}}</td>
<td>{{$blog->description}}</td>
<td>Edit</td>
<td>Delete</td>
</tr>
@endforeach
</tbody>
</table>
<div>
@endsection



Now all code is ready but we need to add 1 line of code to prevent the blog controller without authentication or without login

just add the following constructor method in BlogController class

 public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware('auth');
}


this constructor method will call very first when user will try to access any of BlogController class method, and the middleware will check whether user is logged in then only it will allow to access that method otherwise it will redirect to login page automatically.


After It Run your Code and you will able to create and listing your created blogs/articles. but the Edit and Delete links are not working right now, If you want that also working then please comment here or message me. If we get multiple requests then definitely i will write its part 2 article


Thanks very much for reading this blog, if you have any doubt about it then let me know in comments or by messaging me.

Following is the final code for BlogController.php

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Blog;



class BlogController extends Controller
{
public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware('auth');
}

public function createBlog()
{
return view('blog/create');
}


public function saveBlog(Request $request)
{
$blog = new Blog();

$this->validate($request, [
'title'=>'required',
'category'=>'required',
'description'=> 'required'
]);

$blog->createBlog($request->all());
return redirect('blog/index')->with('success', 'New blog has been created successfully :)');
}

public function showAllBlogs()
{
$blogs = Blog::where('user_id', auth()->user()->id)->get();

return view('blog.index',compact('blogs'));
}

}

20462 views · 5 years ago
Making Charts and Graphs using Laravel

Installing composer

Composer is a package management tool for PHP. Laravel requires composer for installation. We can download composer from https://getcomposer.org/download/

After installation that you can test whether composer installed or not by command
composer

Installing Laravel

The current stable version of laravel is laravel 5.6. We can install laravel package with three ways.

In command prompt or terminal by running composer global require "laravel/installer" and then Laravel new

or

We can create the project with Composer by running composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel

or

Directly clone from github
git clone https://github.com/laravel/laravel/tree/master and after that composer update

Laravel local development server

Run the below command in command prompt or terminal
PHP artisan serve


Above command will start to local development servehttp://localhost:8000 or if you want to change default port:

php artisan serve --port 


Generating charts and graphs

We are using consoletvs package for generating charts. So for installation we can first move inside to our project using command prompt or terminal. We are following the below steps to install

Step 1:

First we need to install ConsoleTVs/Charts composer package inside our laravel project.
composer require consoletvs/charts


Step 2:

After successfully installation of above package, open app/config.php and add service provider.
In config/app.php


'providers' => [
....
ConsoleTVs\Charts\ChartsServiceProvider::class,
],


After the service provider we need to add alias
'aliases' => [
....
'Charts' => ConsoleTVs\Charts\Facades\Charts::class,
]



Step 3

We need to configure of database for application. We can configure in either .env file or config/database.php file.


Step 4

We can migrate our default tables that is user. We can find the table in database/migration folder.

Step 5

We can generate dummy records for demo in users table. For creating dummy records, we need to run the below command in command prompt or terminal
php artisan tinker>>> factory(App\User::class, 20)->create();

the above command will create a set of 20 records.

If we need to add more records we need to run the above command or we can increase the count as much as we want. For example
php artisan tinker>>> factory(App\User::class, 2000)->create();


Step 6Creating controller

For creating controller we need to run below command in terminal or command prompt
php artisan make controller:<controller_name>


Step 7Adding the routes

We can add the routes for navigating our application. You can find routes file inside routes folder. Before 5.4 we can find routes.php file itself, now its web.php. If you are using laravel 5.2 routes.php will inside app/http folder.

So inside web.php:

Route::get('create-chart/{type}','ChartController@makeChart');


Here type will be the parameter we are passing and it will focus to makeChart() function inside chartcontroller

Step 8

Import charts to controller, for that in the namespace section add:

Use charts;


Step 9

We can put the below code into chartController

public function makeChart($type)
{
switch ($type) {
case 'bar':
$users = User::where(DB::raw("(DATE_FORMAT(created_at,'%Y'))"),date('Y'))
->get();
$chart = Charts::database($users, 'bar', 'highcharts')
->title("Monthly new Register Users")
->elementLabel("Total Users")
->dimensions(1000, 500)
->responsive(true)
->groupByMonth(date('Y'), true);
break;
case 'pie':
$chart = Charts::create('pie', 'highcharts')
->title('HDTuto.com Laravel Pie Chart')
->labels(['Codeigniter', 'Laravel', 'PHP'])
->values([5,10,20])
->dimensions(1000,500)
->responsive(true);
break;
case 'donut':
$chart = Charts::create('donut', 'highcharts')
->title('HDTuto.com Laravel Donut Chart')
->labels(['First', 'Second', 'Third'])
->values([5,10,20])
->dimensions(1000,500)
->responsive(true);
break;
case 'line':
$chart = Charts::create('line', 'highcharts')
->title('HDTuto.com Laravel Line Chart')
->elementLabel('HDTuto.com Laravel Line Chart Lable')
->labels(['First', 'Second', 'Third'])
->values([5,10,20])
->dimensions(1000,500)
->responsive(true);
break;
case 'area':
$chart = Charts::create('area', 'highcharts')
->title('HDTuto.com Laravel Area Chart')
->elementLabel('HDTuto.com Laravel Line Chart label')
->labels(['First', 'Second', 'Third'])
->values([5,10,20])
->dimensions(1000,500)
->responsive(true);
break;
case 'geo':
$chart = Charts::create('geo', 'highcharts')
->title('HDTuto.com Laravel GEO Chart')
->elementLabel('HDTuto.com Laravel GEO Chart label')
->labels(['ES', 'FR', 'RU'])
->colors(['#3D3D3D', '#985689'])
->values([5,10,20])
->dimensions(1000,500)
->responsive(true);
break;
default:
break;
}
return view('chart', compact('chart'));
}


Step 10

Create a blade file. Blade is the view file used inside the laravel. You can add new blade file with any name with an extension of .blade.php
Here we are creating chart.blade.php

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>My Charts</title>
{!! Charts::styles() !!}
</head>
<body>

<div class="app">
<center>
{!! $chart->html() !!}
</center>
</div>

{!! Charts::scripts() !!}
{!! $chart->script() !!}
</body>
</html>


Step 11

We can run our laravel application in local development server by php artisan serve command:

http://localhost:8000/create-chart/bar
http://localhost:8000/create-chart/pie
http://localhost:8000/create-chart/donut
http://localhost:8000/create-chart/line
http://localhost:8000/create-chart/area
http://localhost:8000/create-chart/geo



In the above example we was creating line chart, geo chart, bar chart, pie chart, donut chart, line chart and area chart. We can also create gauge chart, progressbar chart, areaspline chart, scatter chart, percentage chart etc using consoletvs charts composer package.

There are a lot of jQuery libraries also available like amcharts, chartjs, highcharts, google, material, chartist, fusioncharts, morris, plottablejs etc. However, using this plugin we can easily create charts without having to use jQuery, another advantage to building it in with Laravel.

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