Laravel Log Keeper

 Laravel Log Keeper helps rotating your logs while storing them anywhere you want with custom local/remote retention policies.

Mathias Grimm the creator of the package said he created this because his company has numerous projects deployed across many servers and they log a lot of data. Over time, this causes the servers to run out of space and they have to manually move these files. By using 

Laravel Log Keeper the logs are kept on the server for a period of time, then automatically moved off into a dedicated storage system like S3.

Here is an example of some of the configuration this package supports:

LARAVEL_LOG_KEEPER_REMOTE_DISK           = "s3"
LARAVEL_LOG_KEEPER_LOCAL_RETENTION_DAYS  = 3
LARAVEL_LOG_KEEPER_REMOTE_RETENTION_DAYS = 15
LARAVEL_LOG_KEEPER_REMOTE_PATH           = "myproject1-prod-01"

Give it a look if you’d like to automatically move and store your log files.

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Add Laravel Unit Tests Directly From Chrome

Today Marcel Pociot launched a new Chrome Extension that allows you to visually create acceptance tests directly from the browser. Here is a quick demo of it in action:

You can find more details about this extension on Marcel’s announcement post, download the extension from the Chrome web store, or view the source on Github.
This should be great for those just getting starting testing, or for those that would like to save time when writing acceptance tests.

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Package for generating HTML Menus

 

A modern package to generate html menus:

Virtually every website displays some sort of menu. Generating html menus might seem simple, but it can become complex very quickly. Not only do you have to render some basic html, but you also have to manage which item is active. If a menu has submenu you’ll also want the parents of an active item to be active. Sometimes you want to insert some html between menu items.

Here is an example of the API and you can see how easy generating a menu is.

Menu::new()
    ->add(Menu::new()
        ->link('/introduction', 'Introduction')
        ->link('/requirements', 'Requirements')
        ->link('/installation-setup', 'Installation and Setup')
    )
    ->add(Menu::new()
        ->prepend('<h2>Basic Usage</h2>')
        ->prefixLinks('/basic-usage')
        ->link('/your-first-menu', 'Your First Menu')
        ->link('/working-with-items', 'Working With Items')
        ->link('/adding-sub-menus', 'Adding Sub Menus')
    );

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Laravel Setup Wizard

 

Laravel Setup Wizard is a package to help you build a web setup wizard or installer for your application.

From the config file you can setup your apps requirements, folder permissions, and define the steps required:

'steps' => [
    'requirements' => \MarvinLabs\SetupWizard\Steps\RequirementsStep::class,
    'folders'      => \MarvinLabs\SetupWizard\Steps\FoldersStep::class,
    'env'          => \MarvinLabs\SetupWizard\Steps\EnvFileStep::class,
    'database'     => \MarvinLabs\SetupWizard\Steps\DatabaseStep::class,
    'my_step'      => \App\Setup\MyStep::class',
    'final'        => \MarvinLabs\SetupWizard\Steps\FinalStep::class,
],

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Laravel Exception Recorder and Notifier Package

 

LERN (Laravel Exception Recorder and Notifier) is a package that will record exceptions into a database and will send you a notification.

It currently supports notifications via Email, Pushover, Slack, Hipchat, Fleephook, and Flowdock. Once installed implementation is added to app/Exceptions/Handler.php file:

public function report(Exception $e)
{
    if ($this->shouldReport($e)) {
        LERN::handle($e); //Record and Notify the Exception
        /*
        OR...
        LERN::record($e); //Record the Exception to the database
        LERN::notify($e); //Notify the Exception
        */
    }

    return parent::report($e);
}




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Automatically Create Model Factories

 

Laravel Test Factory Generator is a new package by Marcel Pociot that generates model factories from your existing models and database structure.

Once installed it gives you a new Artisan command to generate the model factories:

php artisan test-factory-helper:generate

This command will then look through all your models, create test factories, and save them in your database/factories/ModelFactory.php file.

To prevent overwriting any of your existing factories, the command will append new ones and not modify any existing. It does include a --reset flag that will rewrite the entire ModelFactory file.

As an example if you have the following migration:

Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->increments('id');
    $table->string('name');
    $table->string('username');
    $table->string('email')->unique();
    $table->string('password', 60);
    $table->rememberToken();
    $table->timestamps();
});

Once you run the command this will be appended to your ModelFactory.php file:

$factory->define(App\User::class, function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
    return [
        'name' =>  $faker->name ,
        'username' =>  $faker->userName ,
        'email' =>  $faker->safeEmail ,
        'password' =>  bcrypt($faker->password) ,
        'remember_token' =>  str_random(10) ,
    ];
});

You can find more information on Github.

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Manage your Language files from Artisan

 Larave
l Langman is a new package that turns your console into a language file manager. It helps you search, update, add, and remove translation lines right from an Artisan command.

Here is an example usage:

php artisan langman:show users

Which returns a table of results:

'+---------+---------------+-------------+
| key     | en            | nl          |
+---------+---------------+-------------+
| name    | name          | naam        |
| job     | job           | baan        |
+---------+---------------+-------------+

It supports filling in missing translations, searching, syncing and more.

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Server Monitoring Command for Laravel

 

Server Monitoring is a package that will periodically monitor the health of your server and website. It provides healthy/alarm status notifications for Disk Usage, an HTTP Ping function to monitor the health of external services, and a validation/expiration monitor for SSL Certificates.

This package works by setting up a config file and then having a monitor:run artisan command set on a schedule. When it runs it will alert you via email, Pushover, Slack, or logged to the filesystem.

It currently supports the following monitors:

Disk Usage Monitors

Disk usage monitors check the percentage of the storage space that is used on the given partition, and alert if the percentage exceeds the configurable alarm percentage.

HTTP Ping Monitors

HTTP Ping monitors perform a simple page request and alert if the HTTP status code is not 200. They can optionally check that a certain phrase is included in the source of the page.

SSL Certificate Monitors

SSL Certificate monitors pull the SSL certificate for the configured URL and make sure it is valid for that URL. Wildcard and multi-domain certificates are supported.

The monitor will alert if the certificate is invalid or expired, and will also alert when the expiration date is approaching. The days on which to alert prior to expiration is also configurable.

You can find out more about this package on Github.

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Laravel Console Command Validation

 Command Validator is a package that lets you validate Laravel Console Commands.

Here is an example of its usage:

use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use Cerbero\CommandValidator\ValidatesInput;

class Example extends Command
{
    use ValidatesInput;

    public function rules()
    {
        return [
            'year' => 'digits:4|min:2000'
        ];
    }
}

The rules available come from the default Laravel validation rules but you can add custom ones, just as you would in form validation.

Give it a try the next time you need to validate console commands.

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Cascading soft deletes with Eloquent

 

Michael Dyrynda has a new package for cascading soft deletes with Laravel and Eloquent.

In scenarios when you delete a parent record – say for example a blog post – you may want to also delete any comments associated with it as a form of self-maintenance of your data.

Normally, you would use your database’s foreign key constraints, adding an ON DELETE CASCADE rule to the foreign key constraint in your comments table.

It may be useful to be able to restore a parent record after it was deleted. In those instances, you may reach for Laravel’s soft deleting functionality.

In doing so, however, you lose the ability to use the cascading delete functionality that your database would otherwise provide. That is where this package aims to bridge the gap in functionality when using the SoftDeletes trait.

Here is some example code:

class Post extends Model
{
    use SoftDeletes, CascadeSoftDeletes;

    protected $cascadeDeletes = ['comments'];

    protected $dates = ['deleted_at'];

    public function comments()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(Comment::class);
    }
}

It’s simple to setup and if you are in need of cascading soft deletes, check it out.

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Use Collections outside Laravel

 Tighten has created a Collections only split from Laravel’s Illuminate Support package. This is designed for stand-alone PHP packages that would still like to use Laravel Collections. In the README it says it’s a manual split with the goal of eventually automating the process.

One issue report brings into question why it’s split under the Illuminate namespace and Matt Stauffer said this is done to keep your type hints consistent. To prevent conflicts Composer’s replace feature will be used so the original illuminate/support will be used if it’s required by any other package.

You can find out more on Github.

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Query Tracer Package

 Laravel Query Tracer is a new package by Trevor Fitzgerald that allows you to find exactly where a query is being called in your app. It works by tapping into Laravel’s global query scopes to do a backtrace and find where a query originated.

The package ships with support for the Laravel Debugbar, Clockwork, or your own query listener.

Update: Barry vd. Heuvel, author of Debugbar, pointed out on Twitter that this is already included with it.

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