Laravel is one of the most popular and powerful PHP frameworks for rapidly building web applications. It adheres to the MVC architecture and promotes the use of common design patterns. As with any framework, many practices can enhance coding efficiency, performance, testing and collaboration when working with Laravel. In this blog post, we will cover some of the best practices in various areas when using Laravel for web app development. Hire Laravel Developers who understand how to leverage these best practices to work on your next web app project.
Structure & Organization
How a Laravel app is organized can have a tremendous impact on maintenance and scalability over time as features evolve. Careful thought should be put into the initial architecture. Here are some recommendations around structure and organization:
Stick to conventions
Leverage existing conventions for naming files and locations for controllers, models, views, and other components. This makes it easier for new team members to navigate the codebase.
Organize code into logical modules.
Modular groupings by business vertical or application area help manage complexity in large apps. Reusable modules can also aid reusability and collaboration across teams.
Reference dependencies carefully
Always use hard references to classes so dependencies are explicit rather than relying on global imports. This also helps when refactoring code later.
Standardize environment configs
Manage environment-specific configuration uniformly across properties and files so credential management stays consistent in dev, test, staging and production.
Version control everything
Work off branches of a main codebase tracked in Git. Migrate database changes using reversible migrations. Version-controlling libraries and environment configs also aid deployment orchestration and rollbacks.
Controllers & Routing
The controller layer handles translating HTTP requests into application logic. Here are some recommendations for keeping it clean:
Skinny controllers
Keep controllers focused on thin top-level business logic. Offload intensive tasks like data access, processing and validation into services and repositories.
DRY routing
Centralize common routes into route resource controllers. Use route model binding to inject dependencies into controllers directly for cleaner handler methods.
RESTful principles
Follow REST guidelines for logical routing like index, store, show, update and destroy to provide a standard organization that others understand.
Route caching
Configure route caching in production for improved performance. The improved request speed comes from bypassing router resolution on each call.
Database & ORM
When tapping into Laravel’s powerful Eloquent ORM and relational database capabilities, here are some recommendations to consider:
Migrations
Use migrations for safely evolving database schemas alongside application releases rather than direct schema modification. This avoids data loss or incompatibilities.
Seed data carefully
Seed any required data through classes that can be called on deployment to avoid hardcoded values while still populating system prerequisites and super user accounts.
Constrain relationships
Declare relationships with foreign keys as “constrained”, so cascading deletes and updates adhere to data integrity guidelines appropriate for that domain.
Bind models
Use explicit model binding to inject the desired Eloquent models directly into controller methods to simplify call patterns and improve reusability.
Read replicas
Consider configuring database read replicas to distribute SELECT query load away from the write master for improved performance at scale. This helps avoid write contention.
Development & Testing
Following test-driven and continuous integration principles when working with Laravel results in higher-quality code.
Test orientation
Adopt a test-focused mindset using test-driven design principles. Start by writing failing tests for intended behaviour before implementing associated functionality.
Mocking & stubs
Use mocking and method stubs while unit testing classes in isolation to simulate the real context the class expects without heavy real dependencies that complicate tests.
Behavior testing
Write functional feature tests that invoke the full request handling pipeline, testing the expected application behaviour from the user perspective rather than only unit logic.
Laravel Security Best Practices
Web applications are prone to vulnerabilities, so following security best practices is vital for any Laravel project. Here are some high-priority guidelines:
Escape outputs
Always escape user-supplied inputs before rendering to prevent XSS attacks by running malicious scripts. Use Laravel’s blade escape directives or utils like ‘e()’.
Input validation
Validate and sanitize incoming data from forms or API calls with Laravel’s request classes and validator to prevent abuse. Never directly access request inputs.
Hash passwords
For any authentication workflows, leverage Laravel’s baked-in bcrypt password hashing instead of storing raw passwords to protect user credentials and data securely.
Prepare for SQL Injections
Use parameterized queries via Eloquent ORM or query builder rather than dynamically constructed SQL, which could enable SQL injection vulnerabilities.
Review defaults
Review default project settings like debug mode, APP_ENV, and CORS to tighten security standards before an application is opened to public access. Disable anything extraneous.
Caching
Caching is a simple but highly effective optimization. Here are smart tactics:
Cache shoehorn
Cache repeat database queries by shoehorning cache read checks above costly queries. Return cached results when fresh rather than querying. Write cache on misses.
Cache directives
Use Laravel’s decorative cache directives like @cacheFor to cache results from specified methods. This streamlines cache writing and standardize expiry rules.
Cache prefixing
Prefix cache keys with the current application version so that new releases transparently invalidate outdated caches upon deployment.
Cache layering
Implement layered caching at multiple levels like Redis and file caching for faster retrieval on outer layers but longer retention of less accessed data in storage.
Cache events
Exploit cache hook events like CacheHit, which fires on every cache fetch. Use them to collect analytics on cache performance.
Logging & Debugging
Chasing down bugs and unexpected behaviour relies heavily on good application telemetry through effective logging. Having great logs can save huge headaches.
Standardize logging
Use a common structured JSON format across application logging statements following defined conventions. This allows much easier centralized parsing and analysis instead of unstructured text. Monolog configs can drive these standards.
Configurable logging
Make log handlers and channels configurable via service provider extensions or env variables rather than hardcoded to ease agent integration and output stream direction.
Debug selectively
Avoid leaving wholesale debugging dumping, which creates noisy logs. Instead, use selective debugging tooling like clockwork to target focused application areas during investigation.
Log database queries
Leverage Laravel’s log query capabilities, especially during development, to analyze optimizations for high-cost Model and SQL calls that can be cached afterwards.
Exception handling
Handle exceptions centrally using report/render exception methods. The report logs key context safely and then renders generic user-facing messaging, avoiding stack traces in public.
Frontend & JavaScript
The decoupled nature of frontend JavaScript and backend Laravel introduces complexity in the communication and coordination between these layers. Additionally, complex UI code can quickly become disorganized without some guiding principles.
Here are several best practices and integration tips when working with JavaScript frontends powered by frameworks like Vue, React or Svelte with a Laravel backend:
Use templates
Render blade templates as base page shells housing head content, navbars, script imports and placeholders for page-specific content sections that JavaScript renders dynamically.
Centralize AJAX
Standardize AJAX communication by exposing controller actions designed to handle JavaScript requests and return JSON responses rather than ad hoc routes.
JavaScript scaffolding
Use NPM tools like Vite or Laravel Mix to compile modern JavaScript with efficient minification and translation to promote the use of the latest web standards without building complexity.
Employ CSRF protection
Enable frontend CSRF request verification integration so AJAX calls leverage Laravel’s built-in protection middleware transparently and securely.
Async broadcasts
Consider using Laravel Echo for server-triggered push messaging to clients, replacing AJAX polling for faster updates and lower overhead for notifications and real-time data.
Deployment & Environments
Lastly, here are release process suggestions:
Version control flow
Enforce consistent git branching model and semantic versioning flow across developer teams focused on isolating change risk through well-tested merges into master rather than direct commits.
Configuration parity
synchronize environment-specific configurations through .env files checked into source control (excluding secrets) while securing credentials through more clandestine env variable injections on the server.
Zero downtime releases
Structure infrastructure across load-balanced servers or containers, allowing rolling, canary or blue/green deployments to avoid application downtime during continuous delivery pipeline runs.
Error monitoring
Monitor releases through tools like Sentry that track exceptions generated in production environments and feedback aggregated stack traces to diagnose without live debugging overhead.
Automated workflows
Standardize deployment scripts into executable actions triggered automatically via continuous delivery services in response to git events, allowing teams to streamline and scale release workflows reliably and audibly.
Final Words
Mastering these Laravel best practices around folder structure conventions, test-driven development, security concepts, caching strategies, console tooling techniques and release automation workflows is essential to getting the best web development services.
Adopting these recommendations benefits all contributors in a codebase, enabling easier onboarding for team members, faster troubleshooting for developers, smoother handoffs between teams and more seamless version upgrades for end users.
While these represent great starting points, ideally enshrine additional standards unique to your technology stack and business vertical into self-enforcing policy layers and continuous validation pipelines to further operationalize consistency and excellence as code progresses from proof of concept to production-ready application.