Laravel 7.x new features

07 May 2020

Laravel 7 released on March 3rd 2020, bug fixes until September 3rd 2020, and security fixes until March 3rd 2021 ¹

Laravel Sanctum
Custom Eloquent Casts
1. Blade Component Tags & Improvements
HTTP Client
Fluent String Operations
Route Model Binding Improvements
Multiple Mail Drivers
Route Caching Speed Improvements
CORS Support
Query Time Casts
MySQL 8+ Database Queue Improvements
Artisan test Command
Stub Customization
Queue maxExceptions Configuration
Markdown Mail Template Improvements

Laravel Sanctum

Laravel Sanctum is a featherweight authentication system for SPAs². Tt supports mobile application and simple, token based API. Each user of application will be allowed to generate multiple API tokens for their account.

Custom Eloquent Casts

Eloquent cast class will be like.

namespace App\Casts;

use Illuminate\Contracts\Database\Eloquent\CastsAttributes;

class Json implements CastsAttributes
{
    /**
     * Cast the given value.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model  $model
     * @param  string  $key
     * @param  mixed  $value
     * @param  array  $attributes
     * @return array
     */
    public function get($model, $key, $value, $attributes)
    {
        return json_decode($value, true);
    }

    /**
     * Prepare the given value for storage.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model  $model
     * @param  string  $key
     * @param  array  $value
     * @param  array  $attributes
     * @return string
     */
    public function set($model, $key, $value, $attributes)
    {
        return json_encode($value);
    }
}

In model

namespace App;

use App\Casts\Json;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class User extends Model
{
    /**
     * The attributes that should be cast to native types.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $casts = [
        'options' => Json::class,
    ];
}

Blade Component Tags & Improvements

Remember @if and @endif? Now you can do this.

Component class

namespace App\View\Components;

use Illuminate\View\Component;

class Alert extends Component
{
    /**
     * The alert type.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    public $type;

    /**
     * Create the component instance.
     *
     * @param  string  $type
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct($type)
    {
        $this->type = $type;
    }

    /**
     * Get the class for the given alert type.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function classForType()
    {
        return $this->type == 'danger' ? 'alert-danger' : 'alert-warning';
    }

    /**
     * Get the view / contents that represent the component.
     *
     * @return \Illuminate\View\View|string
     */
    public function render()
    {
        return view('components.alert');
    }
}

Blade view template

<div class="alert " >
    
</div>

HTTP Client

Laravel 7 provides a wrapper of Guzzle as HTTP client. It allows developer to quickly make outgoing HTTP requests to communicate with other web applications.

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;

$response = Http::withHeaders([
    'X-First' => 'foo',
    'X-Second' => 'bar'
])->post('http://test.com/users', [
    'name' => 'Taylor',
]);

return $response['id'];

And also, Unit test can mock fake client in order to test.

Http::fake([
    // Stub a JSON response for GitHub endpoints...
    'github.com/*' => Http::response(['foo' => 'bar'], 200, ['Headers']),

    // Stub a string response for Google endpoints...
    'google.com/*' => Http::response('Hello World', 200, ['Headers']),

    // Stub a series of responses for Facebook endpoints...
    'facebook.com/*' => Http::sequence()
                            ->push('Hello World', 200)
                            ->push(['foo' => 'bar'], 200)
                            ->pushStatus(404),
]);

Fluent String Operations

Creating a fluent Illuminate\Support\Stringable object using the Str::of method.

return (string) Str::of('  Laravel Framework 6.x ')
                    ->trim()
                    ->replace('6.x', '7.x')
                    ->slug();

Route Model Binding Improvements

Laravel 7 provides more binding possibility when identify route.

Key Customization

Route::get('api/posts/{post:slug}', function (App\Post $post) {
    return $post;
});

Automatic Scoping

use App\Post;
use App\User;

Route::get('api/users/{user}/posts/{post:slug}', function (User $user, Post $post) {
    return $post;
});

Multiple Mail Drivers

Laravel 7 allows single application to own multiple configuration of mailers.

Mail::mailer('postmark')
        ->to($request->user())
        ->send(new OrderShipped($order));

Route Caching Speed Improvements

There is a 2x speed improvement in requests per second on a simple “Hello World” benchmark.

CORS Support

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing support. ³

Query Time Casts

use App\Post;
use App\User;

$users = User::select([
    'users.*',
    'last_posted_at' => Post::selectRaw('MAX(created_at)')
            ->whereColumn('user_id', 'users.id')
])->get();

MySQL 8+ Database Queue Improvements

For those applications using MYSQL 8+ as db backed queue, Laravel 7 is using the FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED clause and other SQL enhancements.

Artisan test Command

php artisan test

Stub Customization

php artisan stub:publish

Queue maxExceptions Configuration

namespace App\Jobs;

class ProcessPodcast implements ShouldQueue
{
    /**
     * The number of times the job may be attempted.
     *
     * @var int
     */
    public $tries = 25;

    /**
     * The maximum number of exceptions to allow before failing.
     *
     * @var int
     */
    public $maxExceptions = 3;

    /**
     * Execute the job.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function handle()
    {
        Redis::throttle('key')->allow(10)->every(60)->then(function () {
            // Lock obtained, process the podcast...
        }, function () {
            // Unable to obtain lock...
            return $this->release(10);
        });
    }
}

Liduan Worklog