Laravel 5.8

By Max Snow

maxsnow.me

github.com/specialtactics

Native support for Carbon 2

• Carbon 2 has a HUGE amount of new features (and changes)
• Including microsecond precision
• Previously it was impossible (or very hard) to use it with Laravel, because Laravel requires carbon 1 explicitly
• Starting with Laravel 5.8, we’ll be able to choose which version of Carbon to use!
• Migrating to Carbon 2 is a big deal in itself (due to mange changes), but it is well worthwhile, if you have the freedom to address technical debt

Automatic Policy Resolution is Coming to Laravel 5.8

• Assuming you put your models and policies in conventional locations

Blade Template File Path

​

• Compiled Blade templates, will have a comment hint of the template path
• Provides the opportunity for Blade debugging in PhpStorm through mappings to the blade template

dotenv 3.0

• More flexibility with which parts of the environment we want to read from
• First-class support for multiline variables (think keys)
• No more trimming of values
• Accept list of paths to use in searching for a .env file
• Stronger validation of variable names to avoid silent failures of obscure errors

Misc

• PHPUnit 8 support
• Event::fire() removed (previously deprecated)
• Markdown file directory has been changed
• Additions (ie. fixes) for some irregular plurals (affects Eloquent)
• Cache locking safety improvements (relevant only if you use cache locking)
• Deferred Service Providers are now implemented by implementing an interface, rather than setting the $defer property
• Nexmo / Slack Notification Channels are an independent package now
• For full list, check https://laravel.com/docs/master/upgrade �

Some more interesting changes...

• Queueing
• Deprecation of string and array helpers

So you think that a minor package update should have no breaking changes huh?

​

Taylor Otwell, 2019, trollerised

Caching

Various aspects changed to confirm to PSR-16

Changes in how TTL is specified

• Previously (version <= 5.7), cache TTL was specified in minutes
• From version >= 5.8, cache TTL will be specified in seconds
• So if you are using integers to feed your cache TTL, you will need to make some changes...

// Laravel 5.7 - Store item for 30 minutes...�Cache::put('foo', 'bar', 30);��// Laravel 5.8 - Store item for 30 seconds...�Cache::put('foo', 'bar', 30);

How to update

• Laravel Shift https://laravelshift.com/
• Better yet, take this as an opportunity to re-write how you do your TTLs…
• … by using DateTimeInterface !
• Carbon example ;

​

// Laravel 5.7 / 5.8 - Store item for 30 seconds...�Cache::put('foo', 'bar', now()->addSeconds(30));

Other changes

• Without specifying TTL (defaults to null), items are stored in cache forever
• Using a TTL of zero or lower, will result in cache invalidation for that key
• KeyWritten event updates as a result
• Check out PSR-16 https://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-16/

​

​

Str & Arr helpers

Deprecated & will be removed in 5.9

All global string & array helpers deprecated

• Array helpers generally begin with array_*
• For string helpers, it’s a bit more tricky
• Rule of thumb is, if it’s a global namespace function, then it’s likely affected
• Check this PR for a full list -
• https://github.com/laravel/framework/pull/26898/files
• Reasoning for this is to follow best practices
• snake_case global functions are for the PHP STL
• All of our code should be namespaced and used correctly
• So all the functionality isn’t leaving laravel - just the global namespace wrappers

New syntax

• Laravel Shift - https://laravelshift.com/
• If you prefer to keep using them, pull in https://github.com/laravel/helpers
• Update your own Helpers to stick to conventions
• Ie. Prefer to use \App\Support\Helper::function() than global namespaced helpers
• Use Illuminate\Support\Arr;

​

​

Conclusion

An interesting update, which has more features than most, more changes than most - and thus requiring a bit more effort, than most.

So what’s up with Laravel 6?

Bonus

Scheduler...

• Once upon a time, I wanted to schedule some tasks…..

Scheduler...

• Then I thought, let’s try all these cool new flags

​

Scheduler...

• Then I thought, let’s try all these cool new flags
• And it broke everything

​

​

Scheduler...

• As it turns out, the “run this task in the background” made it not work
• I thought I’d look into what it does, so I consulted the manual
• And it contained no technical info
• Nobody on slack answered (haven’t tried IRC yet, gotta catch TO)
• Tried to look into source code, but it’s a bit obfuscated
• I would think it it just does an & in the CLI so…
• Not really clear why it would break

​

​

Bonus #2

Rounding vs Truncating in PHP

• Let’s say I want to round to some number of decimals
• But I don’t want to round it up or down - instead I want to truncate
• Interesting, there is no way to do it
• Ie; truncate decimals from 123.459 OR 123.452 to 2 decimal places should return the SAME result - ie;
• 123.459 = 123.45
• 123.452 = 123.45
• Every inbuilt PHP function does a rounding operation, so you will always get a ceil() or floor()

Solution? Wrote my own function to do it

• Upon searching, there was no way to do it in the language
• Some weird implementations on stack
• Wrote & unit tested a function to do it
• Submitted it as a PR to the math-php package
• https://github.com/markrogoyski/math-php/pull/287

​