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Models and controllers are one of the most essential programming handlers in the Laravel MVC framework, and both are used vastly for different functional operations. Models in Laravel are created inside the app folder and are mostly used to interact with the database using Eloquent ORM, while the controllers are located inside the directory App/Http/Controllers.

As a programmer, you should have the knowledge how to keep the balance in between the programming usage of Models and controllers. As which one should be more utilized for allowing functional tasks in applications deployed on any PHP MySQL hosting.

What is the Concept of Thin Controller and FAT Models

The concept of the thin controller and fat model is that we do less work in our controllers and more work in our models. Like we use our controllers to validate our data and then pass it to the models. While in models, we define our actual functional logic and main coding operations of the desired application. This code structuring process is also a very basic concept of MVC and also the differentiating factor from the conventional complex programming which we mistakenly ignore sometimes.

Why FAT Controllers Are Bad For Handling Code

Controllers are always meant to be defined short and concise, and it should only be used for receiving requests and return responses to it. Anything else further should be programmed in Models, which is actually made for main functional operations.

Placing functional logic in controllers can be bad for many reasons for your applications deployed on anyhosting for PHP. As it not only makes code structure long but also makes it complex sometimes. Further placing code in Controllers is also not recommended because if same functionality is needed somewhere else in route, then pulling out the whole code from their becomes difficult and so its reusability in the application.

Though Laravel is an MVC framework while developing on laravel, we sometimes ignore this and write mostly all our code including the extending of App\Model and all our functional logic in controller route methods. What we can do here is we can create a sub model of our parent model. For example, our parent model is User then we can create another sub model of username in CustomerModel if you are using the same User model for all types of users. In this model, we will write all the logic related to user type Customer.

So now let's take an example of my existing blog creating comment system with laravel and vuejs. In that article, you can see I have made so much mess in my controller methods. Mostly, I have written all my comments logic in my methods, so to shorten that let's clean them in this article. Inside app folder, I will create a new file with name CommentModel.php. Inside this file, I will write my whole logic for comment functions. This is my basic file:

<?php
namespace App;

use App\Comment;
use App\CommentVote;
use App\CommentSpam;
use App\User;
use Auth;

class CommentModel
{


}

?>

Right now it contains no function but has the reference of all my models which I required for this model. Let's first add a function namedgetallcomments passing$pageId as a parameter inside it. The function will get all the comments for the given page:

public function getAllComments($pageId)
 {
 $comments = Comment::where('page_id',$pageId)->get();

 $commentsData = [];


 foreach ($comments as $key) {
 $user = User::find($key->users_id);
 $name = $user->name;
 $replies = $this->replies($key->id);
 $photo = $user->first()->photo_url;
 $reply = 0;
 $vote = 0;
 $voteStatus = 0;
 $spam = 0;
 if(Auth::user()){
 $voteByUser = CommentVote::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();
 $spamComment = CommentSpam::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();


 if($voteByUser){
 $vote = 1;
 $voteStatus = $voteByUser->vote;
 }

 if($spamComment){
 $spam = 1;
 }
 }


 if(sizeof($replies) > 0){
 $reply = 1;
 }

 if(!$spam){
 array_push($commentsData,[
 "name" => $name,
 "photo_url" => (string)$photo,
 "commentid" => $key->id,
 "comment" => $key->comment,
 "votes" => $key->votes,
 "reply" => $reply,
 "votedByUser" =>$vote,
 "vote" =>$voteStatus,
 "spam" => $spam,
 "replies" => $replies,
 "date" => $key->created_at->toDateTimeString()
 ]);
 } 


 }
 $collection = collect($commentsData);
 return $collection->sortBy('votes');
 }

Now I will create another function namedreplies which takes$commentId as a parameter. The function is more or less programmed in the same manner as the upper function get all comments.

protected function replies($commentId)
 {
 $comments = Comment::where('reply_id',$commentId)->get();
 $replies = [];



 foreach ($comments as $key) {
 $user = User::find($key->users_id);
 $name = $user->name;
 $photo = $user->first()->photo_url;

 $vote = 0;
 $voteStatus = 0;
 $spam = 0; 


 if(Auth::user()){
 $voteByUser = CommentVote::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();
 $spamComment = CommentSpam::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();

 if($voteByUser){
 $vote = 1;
 $voteStatus = $voteByUser->vote;
 }

 if($spamComment){
 $spam = 1;
 }
 }
 if(!$spam){


 array_push($replies,[
 "name" => $name,
 "photo_url" => $photo,
 "commentid" => $key->id,
 "comment" => $key->comment,
 "votes" => $key->votes,
 "votedByUser" => $vote,
 "vote" => $voteStatus,
 "spam" => $spam,
 "date" => $key->created_at->toDateTimeString()
 ]);
 }




 }


 $collection = collect($replies);
 return $collection->sortBy('votes');
 }

Now lets create a functioncreate comment which passes$array as a parameter in it:

public function createComment($arary)
 {
 $comment = Comment::create($array);


 if($comment)
 return [ "status" => "true","commentId" => $comment->id ];
 else
 return [ "status" => "false" ]; 
 }

Similarly, Now I will create all the function for comment in myCommentModel, so that all the functions gets accumulated in one model.

<?php
namespace App;

use App\Comment;
use App\CommentSpam;
use App\CommentVote;
use App\User;
use Auth;

class CommentModel
{
 public function getAllComments($pageId)
 {
 $comments = Comment::where('page_id', $pageId)->get();

 $commentsData = [];

 foreach ($comments as $key) {
 $user = User::find($key->users_id);
 $name = $user->name;
 $replies = $this->replies($key->id);
 $photo = $user->first()->photo_url;
 $reply = 0;
 $vote = 0;
 $voteStatus = 0;
 $spam = 0;
 if (Auth::user()) {
 $voteByUser = CommentVote::where('comment_id', $key->id)->where('user_id', Auth::user()->id)->first();
 $spamComment = CommentSpam::where('comment_id', $key->id)->where('user_id', Auth::user()->id)->first();

 if ($voteByUser) {
 $vote = 1;
 $voteStatus = $voteByUser->vote;
 }

 if ($spamComment) {
 $spam = 1;
 }
 }

 if (sizeof($replies) > 0) {
 $reply = 1;
 }

 if (!$spam) {
 array_push($commentsData, [
 "name" => $name,
 "photo_url" => (string) $photo,
 "commentid" => $key->id,
 "comment" => $key->comment,
 "votes" => $key->votes,
 "reply" => $reply,
 "votedByUser" => $vote,
 "vote" => $voteStatus,
 "spam" => $spam,
 "replies" => $replies,
 "date" => $key->created_at->toDateTimeString(),
 ]);
 }

 }
 $collection = collect($commentsData);
 return $collection->sortBy('votes');
 }

 protected function replies($commentId)
 {
 $comments = Comment::where('reply_id', $commentId)->get();
 $replies = [];

 foreach ($comments as $key) {
 $user = User::find($key->users_id);
 $name = $user->name;
 $photo = $user->first()->photo_url;

 $vote = 0;
 $voteStatus = 0;
 $spam = 0;

 if (Auth::user()) {
 $voteByUser = CommentVote::where('comment_id', $key->id)->where('user_id', Auth::user()->id)->first();
 $spamComment = CommentSpam::where('comment_id', $key->id)->where('user_id', Auth::user()->id)->first();

 if ($voteByUser) {
 $vote = 1;
 $voteStatus = $voteByUser->vote;
 }

 if ($spamComment) {
 $spam = 1;
 }
 }
 if (!$spam) {

 array_push($replies, [
 "name" => $name,
 "photo_url" => $photo,
 "commentid" => $key->id,
 "comment" => $key->comment,
 "votes" => $key->votes,
 "votedByUser" => $vote,
 "vote" => $voteStatus,
 "spam" => $spam,
 "date" => $key->created_at->toDateTimeString(),
 ]);
 }

 }

 $collection = collect($replies);
 return $collection->sortBy('votes');
 }

 public function createComment($arary)
 {
 $comment = Comment::create($array);

 if ($comment) {
 return ["status" => "true", "commentId" => $comment->id];
 } else {
 return ["status" => "false"];
 }

 }

 public function voteComment($commentId, $array)
 {
 $comments = Comment::find($commentId);
 $data = [
 "comment_id" => $commentId,
 'vote' => $array->vote,
 'user_id' => $array->users_id,
 ];

 if ($array->vote == "up") {
 $comment = $comments->first();
 $vote = $comment->votes;
 $vote++;
 $comments->votes = $vote;
 $comments->save();
 }

 if ($array->vote == "down") {
 $comment = $comments->first();
 $vote = $comment->votes;
 $vote--;
 $comments->votes = $vote;
 $comments->save();
 }

 if (CommentVote::create($data)) {
 return true;
 }

 }

 public function spamComment($commentId, $array)
 {
 $comments = Comment::find($commentId);

 $comment = $comments->first();
 $spam = $comment->spam;
 $spam++;
 $comments->spam = $spam;
 $comments->save();

 $data = [
 "comment_id" => $commentId,
 'user_id' => $array->users_id,
 ];

 if (CommentSpam::create($data)) {
 return true;
 }

 }
}
?>

Now we have all our required methods inCommentModel. So now let's clean upCommentController which is currently bit complex and lengthy in code structure. As right nowCommentController look like this:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Comment;
use App\CommentVote;
use App\CommentSpam;
use App\User;
use Auth;

class CommentController extends Controller
{


 
 public function index($pageId)
 {
 $comments = Comment::where('page_id',$pageId)->get();

 $commentsData = [];




 foreach ($comments as $key) {
 $user = User::find($key->users_id);
 $name = $user->name;
 $replies = $this->replies($key->id);
 $photo = $user->first()->photo_url;
 $reply = 0;
 $vote = 0;
 $voteStatus = 0;
 $spam = 0;
 if(Auth::user()){
 $voteByUser = CommentVote::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();
 $spamComment = CommentSpam::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();


 if($voteByUser){
 $vote = 1;
 $voteStatus = $voteByUser->vote;
 }

 if($spamComment){
 $spam = 1;
 }
 }


 if(sizeof($replies) > 0){
 $reply = 1;
 }

 if(!$spam){
 array_push($commentsData,[
 "name" => $name,
 "photo_url" => (string)$photo,
 "commentid" => $key->id,
 "comment" => $key->comment,
 "votes" => $key->votes,
 "reply" => $reply,
 "votedByUser" =>$vote,
 "vote" =>$voteStatus,
 "spam" => $spam,
 "replies" => $replies,
 "date" => $key->created_at->toDateTimeString()
 ]);
 } 


 }
 $collection = collect($commentsData);
 return $collection->sortBy('votes');
 }

 protected function replies($commentId)
 {
 $comments = Comment::where('reply_id',$commentId)->get();
 $replies = [];



 foreach ($comments as $key) {
 $user = User::find($key->users_id);
 $name = $user->name;
 $photo = $user->first()->photo_url;

 $vote = 0;
 $voteStatus = 0;
 $spam = 0; 


 if(Auth::user()){
 $voteByUser = CommentVote::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();
 $spamComment = CommentSpam::where('comment_id',$key->id)->where('user_id',Auth::user()->id)->first();

 if($voteByUser){
 $vote = 1;
 $voteStatus = $voteByUser->vote;
 }

 if($spamComment){
 $spam = 1;
 }
 }
 if(!$spam){


 array_push($replies,[
 "name" => $name,
 "photo_url" => $photo,
 "commentid" => $key->id,
 "comment" => $key->comment,
 "votes" => $key->votes,
 "votedByUser" => $vote,
 "vote" => $voteStatus,
 "spam" => $spam,
 "date" => $key->created_at->toDateTimeString()
 ]);
 }




 }


 $collection = collect($replies);
 return $collection->sortBy('votes');
 }

 
 public function store(Request $request)
 {
 $this->validate($request, [
 'comment' => 'required',
 'reply_id' => 'filled',
 'page_id' => 'filled',
 'users_id' => 'required',
 ]);
 $comment = Comment::create($request->all());
 if($comment)
 return [ "status" => "true","commentId" => $comment->id ];
 }

 
 public function update(Request $request, $commentId,$type)
 {
 if($type == "vote"){


 $this->validate($request, [
 'vote' => 'required',
 'users_id' => 'required',
 ]);

 $comments = Comment::find($commentId);
 $data = [
 "comment_id" => $commentId,
 'vote' => $request->vote,
 'user_id' => $request->users_id,
 ];

 if($request->vote == "up"){
 $comment = $comments->first();
 $vote = $comment->votes;
 $vote++;
 $comments->votes = $vote;
 $comments->save();
 }

 if($request->vote == "down"){
 $comment = $comments->first();
 $vote = $comment->votes;
 $vote--;
 $comments->votes = $vote;
 $comments->save();
 }

 if(CommentVote::create($data))
 return "true";
 }

 if($type == "spam"){


 $this->validate($request, [
 'users_id' => 'required',
 ]);

 $comments = Comment::find($commentId);


 $comment = $comments->first();
 $spam = $comment->spam;
 $spam++;
 $comments->spam = $spam;
 $comments->save();

 $data = [
 "comment_id" => $commentId,
 'user_id' => $request->users_id,
 ];

 if(CommentSpam::create($data))
 return "true";
 }
 }

 
 public function destroy($id)
 {
 }
}?>

After cleaning up the controller it will look much simpler and easy to understand like this:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\CommentModel;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class CommentController extends Controller
{

 private $commentModel = null;
 private function __construct()
 {
 $this->commentModel = new CommentModel();
 }

 
 public function index($pageId)
 {
 return $this->commentModel->getAllComments($pageId);
 }

 
 public function store(Request $request)
 {
 $this->validate($request, [
 'comment' => 'required',
 'reply_id' => 'filled',
 'page_id' => 'filled',
 'users_id' => 'required',
 ]);
 return $this->commentModel->createComment($request->all());
 }

 
 public function update(Request $request, $commentId, $type)
 {
 if ($type == "vote") {

 $this->validate($request, [
 'vote' => 'required',
 'users_id' => 'required',
 ]);

 return $this->commentModel->voteComment($commentId, $request->all());
 }

 if ($type == "spam") {

 $this->validate($request, [
 'users_id' => 'required',
 ]);

 return $this->commentModel->spamComment($commentId, $request->all());
 }
 }

}
?>

Wrap Up!

So Isn't it looking much cleaner and simpler to understand now? This is what actually a thin controller and fat model looks like. We have all our logic related to Comment system programmed in ourCommentModel and our controller is now just used to transfer data from the user to our model and returning the response which is coming from our model.

So this is how the structuring of the thin controller and fat model is made. Give your thoughts in the comments below.

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!

Laravel introduces eloquent relationships from laravel 5.0 onwards. We all know, while we creating an application we all have foreign keys. Each table will be connected to some other. Eloquent make easy to connect each tables easily. Here we will One to one, one to many and many to many relationships. Here we will see three types of relationships,
   
. One to one relationships
    . One to many relationships
    . Many to many relationships

Why Eloquent Relationships

Here we have 2 tables, students and marks, so for join each table,

$student = student::join(‘marks’,’marks.student_id,’=’,students.id’)->where(‘students.id’,’1’)->get();

dd($student);

the above query is to long, so when we connect more tables its too tough we will be having a big query and complicated.

Model Query using Relationships

$student_marks = student::find(1);

dd($student_marks->mark1);

The above example is a simple example of eloquent relationships. We can reduce the first query into a simple one.

ONE TO ONE RELATIOSHIPS

Here we are creating 2 tables:
* Users
* Phones

Now we can see one to one relationships using hasone() and belongsto().

We need to create table using migrations

Create migrations

users table will be created by using

Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {

 $table->increments('id');

 $table->string('name');

 $table->string('email')->unique();

 $table->string('password');

 $table->rememberToken();

 $table->timestamps();

});

Phones table will be created by

Schema::create('phones', function (Blueprint $table) {

 $table->increments('id');

 $table->integer('user_id')->unsigned();

 $table->string('phone');

 $table->timestamps();

 $table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users')

 ->onDelete('cascade');

});

After that we need to create model for each tables, as we all know if the table name is laravel table name will be ending with ‘s’ and model name will be without ‘s’ of the same table name.

User model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;



class User extends Authenticatable

{

 use Notifiable;



 

 protected $fillable = [

 'name', 'email', 'password',

 ];



 

 protected $hidden = [

 'password', 'remember_token',

 ];



 

 public function phone()

 {

 return $this->hasOne('App\Phone');

 }

}

Phone Model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;



class Phone extends Model

{

 

 public function user()

 {

 return $this->belongsTo('App\User');

 }

}

For Creating records

$user = User::find(1);

$phone = new Phone;

$phone->phone = '9080054945';

$user->phone()->save($phone);



$phone = Phone::find(1);

$user = User::find(10);

$phone->user()->associate($user)->save();

Now we can get our records by

$phone = User::find(1)->phone;

dd($phone);



$user = Phone::find(1)->user;

dd($user);

ONE TO MANY RELATIONSHIPS

Here we will use hasMany() and belongsTo() for relationships

Now we are creating two tables, posts and comments, we will be having a foreign key towards posts table.


Migrations for posts and comments table

Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {

 $table->increments('id');

 $table->string("name");

 $table->timestamps();

});



Schema::create('comments', function (Blueprint $table) {

 $table->increments('id');

 $table->integer('post_id')->unsigned();

 $table->string("comment");

 $table->timestamps();

 $table->foreign('post_id')->references('id')->on('posts')

 ->onDelete('cascade');

});

Now we will create Post Model and Comment Model

Post Model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;



class Post extends Model

{

 

 public function comments()

 {

 return $this->hasMany(Comment::class);

 }

}

Comment Model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;



class Comment extends Model

{

 

 public function post()

 {

 return $this->belongsTo(Post::class);

 }

}

Now we can create records

$post = Post::find(1);

$comment = new Comment;

$comment->comment = "Hi Harikrishnan";

$post = $post->comments()->save($comment);

$post = Post::find(1);



$comment1 = new Comment;

$comment1->comment = "How are You?";

$comment2 = new Comment;

$comment2->comment = "Where are you?";

$post = $post->comments()->saveMany([$comment1, $comment2]);



$comment = Comment::find(1);

$post = Post::find(2);

$comment->post()->associate($post)->save();

Now we can get records

$post = Post::find(1);

$comments = $post->comments;

dd($comments);



$comment = Comment::find(1);

$post = $comment->post;

dd($post);

MANY TO MANY RELATIONSHIPS

Many to many is little bit different and complicated than the above two.



In this example, I will create users, roles, and role, users_tables, here each table will be connected each other using the foreign keys.



Using belongsToMany() we will use see a demo of Many to many relationship

Create Migrations

Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {

 $table->increments('id');

 $table->string('name');

 $table->string('email')->unique();

 $table->string('password');

 $table->rememberToken();

 $table->timestamps();

});



Schema::create('roles', function (Blueprint $table) {

 $table->increments('id');

 $table->string('name');

 $table->timestamps();

});



Schema::create('role_user', function (Blueprint $table) {

 $table->integer('user_id')->unsigned();

 $table->integer('role_id')->unsigned();

 $table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users')

 ->onDelete('cascade');

 $table->foreign('role_id')->references('id')->on('roles')

 ->onDelete('cascade');

});

Create Models

User Model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;



class User extends Authenticatable

{

 use Notifiable;



 

 protected $fillable = [

 'name', 'email', 'password',

 ];



 

 protected $hidden = [

 'password', 'remember_token',

 ];



 

 public function roles()

 {

 return $this->belongsToMany(Role::class, 'role_user');

 }

}

Role Model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;



class Role extends Model

{

 

 public function users()

 {

 return $this->belongsToMany(User::class, 'role_user');

 }

}

UserRole Model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;



class UserRole extends Model

{

}

Now we can create records

$user = User::find(2); 

$roleIds = [1, 2];

$user->roles()->attach($roleIds);



$user = User::find(3); 

$roleIds = [1, 2];

$user->roles()->sync($roleIds);



$role = Role::find(1); 

$userIds = [10, 11];

$role->users()->attach($userIds);



$role = Role::find(2); 

$userIds = [10, 11];

$role->users()->sync($userIds);

Now we can retrieve records

$user = User::find(1); 

dd($user->roles);



$role = Role::find(1);

dd($role->users);

Hence laravel Eloquent is more powerful and we do relationships easily compared to native query. We will be having three more relationships in laravel. Ie.., has many, one to many polymorphic and many to many polymorphic. With eloquent relationship we can easily connect the tables each other. One to one relationships we can connect two tables with their basic functionalities. In one to many we will connect with single table with multiple options. In Many to many we will be having more tables.

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 && 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.

The following is a sponsored blogpost by Cloudways

Developing an application is not the sole thing you should bank on. You must strive to find the best hosting solution to deploy that application also. The application’s speed is dependent on the hosting provider, that is why I always advise you to go for the best hosting solution to get the ultimate app performance.

Now a days, it is a big challenge to choose any web hosting, as each hosting has its own pros and cons which you must know, before considering it finally for the deployment. I don’t recommend shared hosting for PHP/Laravel based applications, because you always get lot of server hassles like downtime, hacking, 500 errors, lousy support and other problems that are part and parcel of shared hosting.

For PHP applications, you must focus on more technical aspects like caching, configs, databases, etc. because these are essential performance points for any vanilla or framework-based PHP application. Additionally, if the app focuses on user engagement (for instance, ecommerce store), the hosting solution should be robust enough to handle spikes in traffic.

Here, I would like to introduce Cloudways PHP server hosting to you which provides easy, developer and designer friendly managed hosting platform. With Cloudways, you don't need to focus on PHP hosting, but must focus on building your application. You can easily launch cloud servers on five providers including DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS and GCE.

Cloudways ThunderStack

Being a developer, you must be familiar with the concept of stack - an arrangement of technologies that form the underlying hosting solution.

To provide a blazing fast speed and a glitch-free performance, Cloudways has built a PHP stack, known as ThunderStack. This stack consists of technologies that offer maximum uptime and page load speed to all PHP applications. Check out the following visual representation of ThunderStack and the constituent technologies:





As you can see, ThunderStack comprises of a mix of static and dynamic caches with two web servers, Nginx and Apache. This combination ensures the ultimate experience for the users and visitors of your application.

Frameworks and CMS

The strength and popularity of PHP lies in the variety of frameworks and CMS it offers to the developers. Realizing this diversity, Cloudways offers a hassle-free installation of major PHP frameworks including Symfony, Laravel, CakePHP, Zend, and Codeigniter. Similarly, popular CMS such as WordPress, Bolt, Craft, October, Couch, and Coaster CMS - you can install these with the 1-click option. The best part is that if you have a framework or CMS that is not on the list, you can easily install it through Composer.

1-Click PHP Server & Application Installation

Setting up a stack on an unmanaged VPS could take an entire day!

When you opt for Cloudways managed cloud hosting, the entire process of setting up the server, installation of core PHP files and then the setup of the required framework is over in a matter of minutes.

Just sign up at Cloudways, choose your desired cloud provider, and select the PHP stack application.





As you can see, your LAMP stack is ready for business in minutes.

Many PHP applications fail because essential services are either turned off or not set up properly. Cloudways offers a centralized location where you can view and set the status of all essential services such as:



* Apache
* Elasticsearch
* Memcached
* MySQL
* PHP-FPM
* Nginx
* New Relic
* Redis
* Varnish





Similarly, you can manage SMTP add-ons without any fuss.

Staging Environment

With Cloudways, you can test your web applications for possible bugs and errors before taking it live.

Using the staging feature, developers can first deploy their web sites on test domains where they can analyze the applications performance and potential problems. This helps site administrators to fix those issues timely and view the application performance in real-time.

A default sub domain comes pre-installed with the newly launched application, making it easy for the administrators to test the applications on those testing subdomains. Overall, it's a great feature which helps developers know about the possible errors that may arise during the live deployment.

Pre-Installed Composer & Git

PHP development requires working with external libraries and packages. Suppose you are working with Laravel and you need to install an external package. Since Composer has become the standard way of installing packages, it comes preinstalled on the Cloudways platform. Just launch the application and start using Composer in your project.

Similarly, if you are familiar with Git and maintain your project on GitHub or BitBucket, you don’t need to worry about Git installation. Git also comes pre-configured on Cloudways. You can start running commands right after application launch.

Cloudways MySQL Manager

When you work with databases in PHP, you need a database manager. On the Cloudways platform, you will get a custom-built MySQL manager, in which you can perform all the tasks of a typical DB manager.




However, if you wish to install and use another database manager like PHPMyAdmin, you can install it by following this simple guide on installing PHPMyadmin.

Server & Application Level SSH

If you use Linux, you typically use SSH for accessing the server(s) and individual applications. A third-party developer requires application and server level access as per the requirements of the client. Cloudways offers SSH access to fit the requirements of the client and users.

PHP-FPM, Varnish & Cron Settings

Cloudways provides custom UI panel to set and maintain PHP-FPM and Varnish settings. Although the default configuration is already in place, you can easily change all the settings to suit your own, particular development related requirements. In Varnish settings, you can define URL that you want to exclude from caching. You can also set permissions in this panel.




Cron job is a very commonly used component of PHP application development process. On Cloudways platform, you can easily set up Cron jobs in just a few clicks. Just declare the PHP script URL and the time when the script will run.

Cloudways API & Personal Assistant Bot

Cloudways provides an internal API that offers all important aspects of the server and application management. Through Cloudways API, you can easily develop, integrate, automate, and manage your servers and web apps on Cloudways Platform using the RESTful API. Check out some of the use cases developed using Cloudways API. You just need your API key and email for authentication of the HTTP calls on API Playground and custom applications.




Cloudways employs a smart assistant named CloudwaysBot to notify all users about server and application level issues. CloudwaysBot sends the notifications on pre-approved channels including email, Slack and popular task management tools such as Asana and Trello.

Run Your APIs on PHP Stack

Do you have your own API which you want to run on the PHP stack? No problem, because you can do that, too with Cloudways! You can also use REST API like Slim, Silex, Lumen, and others. You can use APIs to speed up performance and require fast servers with lots of resources. So, if you think that your API response time is getting slower due to the large number of requests, you can easily scale your server(s) with a click to address the situation.

Team Collaboration

When you work on a large number of applications with multiple developers, you need to assign them on any specific application. Cloudways provides an awesome feature of team collaboration through which you can assign developers to specific application and give access to them. You can use this tool to assign one developer to multiple applications. Through team feature, you can connect the team together and work on single platform. Access can be of different type; i.e. billing, support and console. You can either give the full access or a limited one by selecting the features in Team tab.

Final Words

Managed cloud hosting ensures that you are not bothered by any hosting or server related issues. For practical purposes, this means that developers can concentrate on writing awesome code without worrying about underlying infrastructure and hosting related issues. Do sign up and check out Cloudways for the best and the most cost-effective cloud hosting solution for your next PHP project!