Laravel Conventions

Model Conventions

What is a model? A model is what we use to interact with our database. It represents a single row in a table. So if we have a table called students or users the model would be called Student or User.

The following code snippets are examples. This is the required way of using models to create or update the database.

Create

User::create([
     'firstName' => $request->firstName,
     'lastName' => $request->lastName,
     'email' => $request->email,
]);

Update

$user = User::find($request->userId);
$user->firstName = $request->firstName;
$user->lastName = $request->lastName;
$user->email = $request->email;

$user->save();

Validation

Laravel provides a validator we can use to ensure the type of data being stored in our database is accurate.

The following snippets are just examples. This is the required way of implementing validation.

First include this at the top of the class:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator;

Create the validator as it's own function. This way it can be used throughout for different purposes (storing and updating).

protected function validator(array $data) {
  return Validator::make($data, [
    'title' => 'required|string|max:50',
    'preview' => 'required|string|max:100',
    'content' => 'required|string',
  ]);
}

How it's used

$this->validator($request->all())->validate();

This is how it would be used on the frontend side:

<div class="form-group{{ $errors->has('title') ? ' has-error' : '' }}">
  <label for="name">Title</label>
  <input class="form-control input-box" id="title" name="title" placeholder="Title" value="{{ old('title') }}" required>

  @if ($errors->has('title'))
    <span class="help-block">
      <strong>{{ $errors->first('title') }}</strong>
    </span>
  @endif

</div>