Laravel Developer Skills Checklist: How to Become A Good Laravel Developer

Laravel is one of the most used PHP frameworks today. It helps developers build web apps easily and quickly. If you want to become a good Laravel developer, there are some key skills you need. This article gives a checklist of things Laravel developers should know. We will talk about the main Laravel ideas and techniques you need to learn and also cover basic web development skills in this comprehensive Laravel developer skills checklist.

Use this guide to check and improve your Laravel skills. With hard work and practice, you can become a good Laravel developer. You will be able to build complex web apps efficiently. Follow the tips in this article to learn the skills needed to be a pro Laravel developer.

Prerequisite Skills Before Learning Laravel

Before diving into Laravel, it is important to have some basic PHP and web development skills first. Having prior experience with core PHP concepts, SQL, MVC patterns, and frontend technologies will make picking up the Laravel framework much easier.

• Basic PHP programming knowledge – Understanding variables, data types, arrays, loops, functions, classes, and objects in PHP. Familiarity with PHP syntax, namespaces, and autoloading. Some OOP concepts like inheritance, and interfaces.
• Understanding of MVC architecture – Knowing how to separate application logic from presentation. Models provide data access, controllers handle requests and responses, and views are for UI rendering. Experience implementing simple MVC patterns.
• SQL and database fundamentals – Writing SQL statements to create tables, insert, update, delete, and query data. Understanding database relationships like one-to-many. Normalization principles like atomic columns and primary keys. Working with any RDBMS like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.
• HTML, CSS, JavaScript – Building UI layouts with HTML/CSS. Adding interactivity with JavaScript. DOM manipulation and AJAX requests. Basic understanding of frontend frameworks like React, Vue, etc.
• Experience with Composer and Git – Using Composer for dependency management and autoloading. Git for version controlling code features branching, merging, and pull requests.

Learning Laravel Basics

Getting started with Laravel can feel overwhelming at first due to its vast ecosystem. However, getting familiar with the fundamental parts of the framework is crucial before diving deeper. Focus on the key components that make up any Laravel application.

Start by learning routing, controllers, views, and Blade templates. Routing handles matching requests to endpoints and controllers. Controllers contain the application logic that handles requests and returns responses. Views are responsible for presenting the data and Blade provides a templating language for the views.

• Routing, controllers, views, and Blade templates – Understand routing to endpoints and controllers. Controllers handle application logic. Views display templates made with Blade.
• Eloquent ORM and database migrations – Eloquent is the ORM for working with database tables through model classes. Migrations help manage table structures.
• Artisan console and command line tools – Artisan offers helpful commands for development like migration, making models, controllers, etc.
• Basic security and authentication system – Authentication with built-in LoginController class. Authorization policies for protecting routes.
• Laravel collective packages like HTML and Forms – Useful first-party packages that extend Blade with HTML and form-building capabilities.

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Mastering Common Laravel Features

Once you have a good grasp of the basics, the next step is to master some of the core features that Laravel provides out of the box. These common tools and capabilities allow you to build robust web applications.

While Laravel has many advanced features, focus on understanding and applying these effectively:

• Advanced routing techniques – Learn route model binding to inject model instances directly into routes. Use route name wildcards for flexible definitions. Route caching for improved performance. Route groups for organizing large applications.
• Powerful Eloquent ORM capabilities – Define relationships between models like one-to-many, and many-to-many. Utilize eager loading to reduce queries. Leverage mutators and accessors for modifying attributes. Write query scopes for reusing query constraints.
• Middleware, authentication, and policies – Implement middleware for filtering HTTP requests. Add authentication using guards for session-based and API logins. Create policies to authorize user roles and permissions.
• Event listeners and notifications – Use events and listeners for decoupled architecture. Queue email and SMS notifications for transactional messages. Leverage notification channels for flexible delivery.
• Mail and file storage integrations – Configure mail with Mailgun, SparkPost and other SMTP servers. Upload files to cloud storage like Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files. Add media processing with packages.

Developing Good Coding Practices

Becoming an expert Laravel developer goes beyond just learning the features. You need to build good coding habits to write professional, maintainable code.

Follow standard naming conventions like using camelCase for variables and PascalCase for classes. Organize code into logical folders based on feature sets. Utilize dependency injection and avoid tight coupling between classes.

Strive to make your code modular. Break large classes into smaller, single-purpose classes. Refactor duplicated code into reusable services that can be consumed application-wide. Leverage repositories and value objects for encapsulation.

Manage environment-specific configuration through dotenv files. Load configuration values into Laravel’s config files and access them via the config helper. Define separate configs for local, staging, and production.

Write tests to thoroughly cover critical application code. Use Laravel’s testing tools like PHPUnit for unit and feature tests. Test controllers, models, services, and repositories for robust code.

Conclusion

Becoming a skilled Laravel developer takes dedication and practice. Start by building a solid PHP and web development foundation. Then learn Laravel basics like routing, Eloquent ORM, and Blade templates.

Master widely-used features like authentication, middleware, notifications, and mail integrations. Develop good coding habits like following standards, writing modular code, and testing thoroughly. Stay updated on Laravel releases, community packages, tips, and tricks.

As discussed in this Laravel developers skills checklist, learning Laravel does have a curve, but by regularly building projects and following best practices, you can become a professional developer capable of creating complex, maintainable, and scalable web applications with this powerful framework. The result will be growing your skills, career opportunities, and value as a Laravel programmer.