Laravel 5.3 For Beginners

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Published October 23, 2016 by Bill Keck.

Laravel 5.3 For Beginners Updated for Vue 2

I’m happy to announce that Laravel 5.3 has been updated to use Vue 2.0.1, which is the current release of Vue.js. I’ve also added a couple of chapters that cover basic and advanced use of Foundation Maker, a free artisan plugin, giving you new artisan commands for code generation.

Updates to the book are free for the life of the book, just log in to your Leanpub.com account, and pull down the latest copy.

The update to Vue 2 was a hectic one for me, it came just as I released the first version of Foundation Maker, so I really had to scramble to not only update the plugin, but also the book.

One issue that came up was that I was unsuccessful in trying to update an earlier version of Laravel, 5.3.10. For some reason I couldn’t get that to work with Vue 2, so I ended up pulling a new install of Laravel, which was on version 5.3.18. Laravel started shipping Vue 2.01 as of Laravel version 5.3.16.

I have quite a few readers who will be caught in the transition, which is why I’m talking about it here. If you are not yet to chapter 11, and you are working with an install of Laravel that is below 5.3.16, then I would recommend doing a fresh install, and quickly copying the work you have already done into the new version. Otherwise the code from chapter 11 on will not work. Sometimes updating is a bit of a pain, but it’s worth it and you will not be disappointed. In the book, we build a fully searchable, sortable, and paginated data grid using Vue 2.

If you want to check the version of Laravel you are using, you can run the following artisan command:



php artisan -V

Staying current on a new release like Vue 2 is very important, in my opinion. There’s no sense in learning a new javascript framework if you are learning on a version that is already outdated. So that was a huge motivator for me to put in the long days and nights to get this update out to you.

The book is now over 700 pages in length. For those unfamiliar with the book, we cover the basics of REST with a front-end and back-end sample app, Socialite and Facebook one-click registration and login, Image management, admin access control, data grids with Vue 2, Foundation Maker, and charts with Charts.js and Vue.js. The book starts at the beginner level and moves towards a more intermediate level with Elixir, node.js and vue.js.

Thanks to everyone who has and is supporting my work. I don’t have a donate button, but if you would like to contribute, you may do so by buying one of my books, I would really appreciate it. Shares, comments, likes, and book reviews are also greatly appreciated. See you soon.

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Published September 8, 2016 by Bill Keck.

Laravel 5.3 For Beginners Book Official Release

I’m happy to announce I’ve just released my new book, Laravel 5.3 For Beginners. The book comes in at just over 620 pages, and covers a lot of ground that I did not cover in my previous Laravel books, including using Elixir and Vue.js.

The book starts out with the basics, like the previous books, and some of that will sound familiar if you read those books, but then it progresses into more intermediate code. We utilize Socialite for one-click authentication with Facebook and Github, so now we have it set up to handle multiple social providers. We have an image management trait that helps us utilize the Intervention Image package, which makes creating thumbnails very easy.

Another big difference in this book is the use of Elixir and Vue.js. I didn’t cover those in previous books because I felt they were more intermediate, and actually, Vue.js has only recently been adopted by the community to the extent that is now configured in Laravel out of the box. You will love that.

The whole Elixir implementation is easier to get going now, so we get introduced to Elixir for our asset management. But we don’t do that early in book, we save it for later, after you learn the basics.

Instead we take you step by step in building a sample application that will help you understand how the framework actually works. The early chapters are similar to my last book, but there are significant differences, mostly refinements that reflect both my personal growth as a programmer and also trends within the community. For example, while I still use the form helper for date formatting, I don’t use it for much else and we will explore the reasons for that.

Also, we are no longer using jQuery for our data grids. Instead we moved to a very robust data grid built with Vue.js, the javascript framework that is favored by so many Laravel developers, so much so, it comes setup for you out of the box, after you run npm install.

As always, I did my best to make the book comprehensive and accessible to all. Laravel is just an awesome framework, and if you are just learning, it’s a great place to start.

Thanks again to everyone who has purchased my previous books and followed this blog, I appreciate your support!