Blog Entries Tagged "laravel" on Milwaukee Web Developer, PHP and Laravel Programmer, Consultant

Why Do I Use Plain Text Password for My Initial User Record?

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I create a project, I will have at least one user seeded into the database. This usually is an admin user as well.

So, why would I create this user with a plain text password initially?! That’s crazy right?

Let me explain why - and then you can see if you agree.

Validate Everything Including Pagination

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are many reasons why we validate data - whether it’s a Laravel project or any other framework or technology. Sometimes it’s for user or business sanity, other times to keep the application functioning properly. We even do so for security - for both security attacks we know about and hopefully to stop ones we don’t understand.

This is the reason why I reached for validation on pagination requests. This is user input. Just because I don’t understand how it could hurt me doesn’t mean I should ignore it, right?

Let’s validate pagination - easily - in Laravel.

Laravel 201 Created JSON With Location Header

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Each API seems to be different. However, there are some best practices that we should all try to follow.

One of those that I really like is the 201 Created HTTP response. If the object is created immediately, you may even return the full object contents.

In some cases, we don’t have the data or don’t want to return the full payload. We can return null with a location header. Here’s how to do that with Laravel.

Using a Laravel Factory State to Add a Spatie Role

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I love the Spatie Laravel Permissions package. I use it in almost all of my Laravel projects.

When testing, I’ll need to set up users with various different roles and permissions. Usually, I’m using an Eloquent Factory in order to accomplish this.

But it’s a little different when you’re dealing with relationships. Let’s find out how.

Customize Laravel Ide Helper to Autocomplete Blade Files

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m working with Yajra DataTables in a Laravel project and I’ve ran into a little bit of a headache. They provide their own render() method, which you pass a blade file to as the first parameter. Something like users.dogs.index - and through that mechanism it loads the proper blade for the datatable.

Here’s the problem, though. I can’t get auto complete and I can’t click through on that in PHPStorm. But I want to. Let’s find out how.

Stopping Laravel SQL Injection with sole()

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I love using Eloquent’s sole() method in Laravel. It throws an exception if the result set is ever more than 1. It means you should only have a sole record. This is usually what I want. I’ve migrated away from firstOrFail() unless I legitimately want the first of a matching set.

But I just found another reason to love using the sole method - it helps add a layer of protection against SQL injection. Let’s find out how.

Why You Might Want to Hydrate Models to Delete Them in Laravel

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There are many ways to handle cascading functionality in Laravel. You can do this with observers, events, manually dispatched jobs - even in MySQL with cascading deletes.

I prefer to keep my cascading logic in the application code by using Eloquent Model Events. This is super easy when it’s just a single level of model. But what about relationships?

Docker Healthcheck Values for Laravel Projects

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Docker provides the HEALTHCHECK instruction for Dockerfiles and Docker Compose files.

While not absolutely required, configuring these can make your IDE and environment more robust and verbose.

Here’s what I use with some common containers in Laravel projects.

Livewire 3 Reactive Event Dispatching

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Issuing events with Livewire is a useful way to communicate between components. But, there are some caveats to be aware of - especially if you’re coming from something like React or Vue. The majority of this comes from the fact that Livewire treats every component as an island.

This had stumped me a few times in the past. Because of this, I wanted to give a quick example of how you can use Livewire events in a way that you might be more familiar with: with reactivity.

Rendering Json Exceptions in Laravel Before Version 11

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Laravel 11+, it’s quite easy to tell the exception handler to render all (or a select portion of them) as JSON regardless of the request/response type. But what about earlier versions?