Pass Named Handler Arguments to Middleware in Laravel

 Has Parameters is a Laravel package by Tim MacDonald to “pass arguments [to middleware] in a more PHP’ish way.”

Here’s an example of the primary usage as found in the project’s readme:

First, the following is a simplified example of what Laravel’s ThrottleRequests middleware might look like:

1class ThrottleRequests
2{
3    use HasParameters;
4 
5    public function handle($request, Closure $next, $maxAttempts = 60, $decayMinutes = 1, $prefix = '')
6    {
7        //
8    }
9}

Then you could configure the middleware in a route like so:

1Route::stuff()
2    ->middleware([
3        ThrottleRequests::with([
4            'maxAttempts' => 120,
5        ]),
6    ]);

As you can see from the example, this package’s with() method found in the HasParameters trait will take care of working with parameters that have default values.

The readme outlines additional benefits of using this package with your app’s middleware:

Has Parameters improves static analysis / IDE support, allows you to specify arguments by referencing the parameter name, enables skipping optional parameters (which fallback to their default value), and adds some validation, so you don’t forget any required parameters by accident.

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Open Food Facts API

 Open Food Facts is a free food product database you can use to make better food choices. The database has over 1.3 million products listed at the time of writing, including food information such as ingredients, allergens, nutrition facts, and other miscellaneous information found on product labels.

The developers of Open Food Facts have an API library for Laravel, which provides a convenient wrapper to the Open Food Facts API.

A few examples of how you can use this API include a barcode lookup:

1OpenFoodFacts::barcode('20203467');

And finding products that match a search term:

1$collection = OpenFoodFacts::find('Coca Cola Zero');

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A TALL (Tailwind CSS, Alpine.js, Laravel, and Livewire) Preset for Laravel

 There is a newly available frontend preset for Laravel that can get you up-and-running quickly with the TALL stack. If you’re not familiar with the name, it’s an acronym that describes the main technologies involved in the stack:

• TailwindCSS
• Alpine.js
• Laravel
• Livewire

This stack was popularised by Matt Stauffer as he created tallstack.dev to promote its benefits and showcase novapackages.com, which was built with these tools.

This preset takes all of the pain of setting up a new application out of the way by providing some well-thought-out boilerplate. Here are some notable features:

• Frontend assets like TailwindCSS and AlpineJS are set up with Laravel Mix
• Tailwind UI and Tailwind’s Custom Forms extensions are available out-of-the-box
• Views extend a default layout

To install the preset in a fresh Laravel application:

1composer require livewire/livewire laravel-frontend-presets/tall
2php artisan ui tall
3npm install
4npm run dev

If you want authentication in your application, make sure to use the --auth flag on the preset command to get all the relevant routes, controllers, components and views:

1composer require livewire/livewire laravel-frontend-presets/tall
2php artisan ui tall --auth
3npm install
4npm run dev

There are some notable things about the authentication scaffolding, too:

• Most of the auth scaffolding comes as Livewire components
• The parts that can’t be components are set up as single-action controllers
• The auth components come with full tests

All routes, components, controllers, and tests are published to your application. The idea behind this is that you can then take full control over every aspect of the scaffolding in your own app and not need to dig around in the vendor folder to figure out how things are working.

This preset was put together by Dan Harrin, Ryan Chandler and Liam Hammett.

If you’re keen to get started on a new project with these technologies, check out the preset’s readme for installation instructions and more information.

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