Manage Your App Translations using a Friendly UI in Laravel

 Laravel Translations UI provides a simple way to manage your app translations using a friendly UI, It allows you to add, edit, delete and export translations, and it also provides search functionality to find translations.

Features

• View & Create & Delete Translations.
• Manage your translation keys.
• Filter by translation keys or values,
• and more...

Installation

You may use the Composer package manager to install Laravel Translations UI into your Laravel project:

composer require outhebox/laravel-translations

After installing Laravel Translations UI, publish its assets using the following commands.

php artisan translations:install

Migrate your database before importing translations, you can use the following command.

php artisan migrate

Usage

Import your translations using the following command.

php artisan translations:import

If you want to import & overwrite all your previous translations, use the following command.

php artisan translations:import --fresh

Then you can access the translations UI, you can visit the /translations in your browser, but first you need to login to your application if it's a production environment, and you can define who can access the translations UI in the configuration file, see for more details Authorization.

Exporting Translations

You can export your translations using the following command.

php artisan translations:export

Authorization

The Translations UI dashboard may be accessed at the /translations route. By default, you will only be able to access this dashboard in the local environment. There is an authorization gate definition within your app/Providers/TranslationsServiceProvider.php file. This authorization gate controls access to Translations UI Dashboard in non-local environments. You are free to modify this gate as needed to restrict access to your Translations UI installation:

protected function gate()
{
    Gate::define('viewLaravelTranslationsUI', function ($user) {
        return in_array($user->email, [
            //
        ]);
    });
}

For more details, please visit Github.

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Log activity in a Laravel app with Spatie/Laravel-Activitylog

 
Requirements

This package needs PHP 8.1+ and Laravel 9.0 or higher.
The latest version of this package needs PHP 8.2+ and Laravel 8 or higher. If you're employing an older version of the Laravel framework, Then you can utilize v3, v2, or v1 of this package.
Installation and Setup
For the installation purpose, you've to run this command:

composer require spatie/laravel-activitylogThe service provider will be automatically registered. If you need to store your activities in another database connection, you can specify ACTIVITY_LOGGER_DB_CONNECTION in your .env file.
After that, you've to clear the application config cache:php artisan config:clearYou've to publish the migration with this command:php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Spatie\Activitylog\ActivitylogServiceProvider" --tag="activitylog-migrations"Next, you've to generate the activity_log table by using this command:php artisan migrateUsage
Here's an example of how you can log some activity:activity()->log('Hey, I logged something');It will generate a record in the activity_log table. You can recover all activity utilizing the Spatie\Activitylog\Models\Activity model handed by the laravel-activitylog package.Activity::all();Here's another advanced way of doing this:activity() ->performedOn($anEloquentModel) ->causedBy($user) ->withProperties(['customProperty' => 'customValue']) ->log('Look mum, I logged something'); $lastLoggedActivity = Activity::all()->last(); $lastLoggedActivity->subject; //returns an instance of an eloquent model$lastLoggedActivity->causer; //returns an instance of your user model$lastLoggedActivity->getExtraProperty('customProperty'); //returns 'customValue'$lastLoggedActivity->description; //returns 'Look mum, I logged something'Automatic model event logging
This package is pretty cool, it can also automatically log model events. For Example:$newsItem->name = 'updated name';$newsItem->save(); //updating the newsItem will induce an activity being logged$activity = Activity::all()->last(); $activity->description; //returns 'updated'$activity->subject; //returns the instance of NewsItem that was generatedWhen you Call $activity->changes. It will return the following array:[ 'attributes' => [ 'name' => 'original name', 'text' => 'Lorum Ipsum', ], 'old' => [ 'name' => 'updated name', 'text' => 'Lorum Ipsum', ],];

Other  Or


By running the previous command, the activitilog.php file will be created where we can find different activity log Laravel configuration parameters. There are already several predefined parameters that can be very useful such as:

• enabled – If set to false, no activities will be saved to the database.
  – This can be very useful if we want to disable the logging mechanism, for example in our local environment.
• delete_records_older_than_days – a parameter used to automatically clean up older activity logs Laravel.
• table_name – a parameter used to specify the activity Laravel log table
  – By default, this is set to activity_log
• …

We can modify these parameters as we need or add additional based on the functionality we are building.

3 LOGGING MODEL EVENTS

Laravel activity log package can automatically log events such as a Laravel model log that is created, updated or deleted. In our User.php model, we will use the Spatie LogsActivity trait. This trait is extremely simple and has the static boot function for any model, as well as for registering an event that we described. For each event, the related query is performed and it is logged inside the database.

In our model we can set what attributes we will be logging by using:

If our model contains attributes that we want to ignore on a trigger change, we can use:

By default, this logger is configured to log every attribute of the model, but there is an easy way to change that. We can log only the changed attributes after the update by using the following configuration:

Customizing the events being logged

By default, the package will log the created, updated, deleted events, but we can customize with:

Customizing the description:

By setting the all attributes our User model looks like:

Our Laravel activity log installation, setup, and logging model events are completed and we can test it by creating, updating or deleting a user in our application.

Create a user:

activity_log table:

Update user:

activity_log table:

4 RECORDING LOGIN INFORMATION OF THE USERS

As we have already mentioned before, there are pre-defined Spatie logging events that are out of the box with this package. However, sometimes we want to log data on successful login or log out of the users in our application. This is also possible and easy to achieve and we need to follow the following steps:

• Create an Event Listener
• Map the Event Listener to the EventServiceProvider

4.1 Create an Event Listener

For creating an Event Listener, we need to run the following command:

After the new Event Listener is created, insert the following code into the LoginSuccessful listener:

As we can see from the code above, we are going to simply provide the subject and the description of the Laravel log activity, and after that, we will simply flush the success message to the end-user and store the data into the activity_log table.

4.2 Map the Listener

Once we created the listener, we should attach it to the EventServiceProvider.php file.

Now we can record all login activity of the user in the log activity Laravel table. When the user will login into the application a new record will be created in our table.

So, if you want to grow even more, don’t hesitate to watch a Spatie activity log tutorial again and again or any spatie/laravel-activitylog example to improve continuously.

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What's new in Laravel 9

On 8th February 2022, Laravel 9 has been officially released. According to the official website. With this major version release, developers will get 1 year of bug fixes support and 2 years of security updates from the laravel team. Laravel 9 comes with various interesting features and overall improvement of the core framework. Let's find out what's new in Laravel 9.

At a glance Laravel 9

Version	Laravel 9
Release Date	8th Feb 2022
Bug fixes	Until Feb 8, 2023
Security fixes	Until Feb 8, 2024
Minimum PHP	version 8

Laravel 9 new features

Laravel 9 required a minimum PHP version 8. New features are Controller route group, Accessors / Mutators improvement, Flysystem 3.x, Eloquent Enum casting, Inline blade templating, Full-text indexing, Enums implicit route binding, newly designed route listing, testing coverage option, new query builder interface, PHP 8 string function included, anonymous stub migrations, SwiftMailer to Symfony mailer and many interesting features. Let's discover these features.

 

Controller Route Group

From laravel 9 we can use common routes as controller group routes which will make route defining more easy and readable. Let's take a look at what it looks like.

use App\Http\Controllers\PostController;
 
Route::controller(PostController::class)->group(function () {
    Route::get('/posts/{id}', 'show');
    Route::post('/posts', 'store');
});

 

The server.php file

The server.php file used for php artisan serve. From laravel 9, it will be removed from the root of the project. This will be included from the inside of the framework.

 

Inline Blade Templating

With laravel 9, we can convert any blade template string to valid HTML tags easily with the help of an inline blade template. Here an example is given below.

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Blade;
 
return Blade::render('Hi, {{$name}}', ['name' => 'Jhon']);

 

Flysystem 3.x

In Laravel 9, the storage facade will use the Flysystem 3.

 

Anonymous Stub Migrations

To prevent migration class name collisions we can use anonymous stub migration features in laravel 9. Laravel 9 will use this feature as default for the command php artisan make:migration

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
 
return new class extends Migration {

    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('people', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->string('name')->nullable();
        });
    }
};

 

Accessors / Mutators Improvement

From laravel 9, we can easily define eloquent model accessors and mutators every easily with sort syntax which is a very intuitive syntax.

 

Before laravel 9

public function getNameAttribute($value)
{
    return strtoupper($value);
}
 
public function setNameAttribute($value)
{
    $this->attributes['name'] = $value;
}

In laravel 9

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Casts\Attribute;
 
public function name(): Attribute
{
    return new Attribute(
        get: fn ($value) => strtoupper($value),
        set: fn ($value) => $value,
    );
}

 

Enum Eloquent Attribute Casting

Like an as eloquent date, number and other types. Now we can cast eloquent attributes to Enum.

use App\Enums\PostStatus;

protected $casts = [
    'status' => PostStatus::class,
];

 

Full-Text Indexes

In a table definition, we can use full-text indexes in laravel 9.

$table->text('bio')->fullText();

In query

DB::table('users')
    ->whereFullText('bio', 'developer')
    ->get();

 

Checked / Selected Blade Directives

Making checked box checked/unchecked, select box selected state. Now you can use the blade directive.

<input type="checkbox"
        @checked(old('active', $user->active))
        name="active"/>

<select name="user_id">
    @foreach ($users as $row)
        <option value="{{ $row->id }}" @selected(old('id') == $row->id)>
            {{ $row->name }}
        </option>
    @endforeach
</select>

 

Enums Implicit Route Binding

enum Category: string
{
    case Fruits = 'fruits';
    case People = 'people';
}

Route::get('/categories/{category}', function (Category $category) {
    return $category->value;
});

 

SwiftMailer to Symfony Mailer

Laravel 9 will be moved from SwiftMailer to Symfony Mailer. Here is the upgrade guide from SwiftMailer to Symfony Mailer.

 

Pagination - Bootstrap 5

Laravel 9 included bootstrap 5 pagination view. To use bootstrap 5 pagination view add this line in your app service provider inside the boot method.

use Illuminate\Pagination\Paginator;

public function boot()
{
    Paginator::useBootstrapFive();
}

 

Functions and New Helpers

The \Illuminate\Support\Str facade will use PHP 8 string function internally for str_contains, str_starts_with and str_ends_with

Helper

str('Laravel')->append(' Article');
// 'Laravel Article'

str()->snake('LaravelArticle');
//laravel_article

//HTTP redirect to a name route
return to_route('posts.show', ['post' => 1]);

 

Query Builder Interface

Laravel 9 introduce a new query builder interface.

return Model::query()
	->whereNotExists(function($query) {
		// $query is a Query\Builder
	})
	->whereHas('relation', function($query) {
		// $query is an Eloquent\Builder
	})
	->with('relation', function($query) {
		// $query is an Eloquent\Relation
	});

 

New route list design

Laravel 9 comes with a beautiful route list design in CLI with colour highlighted HTTP verb. We'll see the defined route list with the command php artisan route:list




New Test Coverage

A new test coverage option was added in Laravel 9. You will get the test coverage by artisan command
artisan test --coverage. Here is the sample output.

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