Besides being one of the most loved and lightweight PHP frameworks, Laravel has a vast range of tools available to help with your development. The development tools ecosystem is another reason why many developers and companies rely on Laravel for their online presence. It has a robust package management system, a robust test framework, and a framework for asset management, among many other things.
Laravel development tools help you build robust and maintainable web applications and websites in a record time. By using these Laravel resources, you also save time and get a productive, stable, and reliable development environment for your Laravel applications. Some tools even save you time from setting up and configuring your servers, databases, or any other tools.
Are you desperate to know Laravel development tools? Sit tight! We have researched on your behalf and compiled an extensive list of all possible tools that could complement your Laravel development. Let’s get started!
Top Laravel Development Tools
PHPStorm
If you’re looking for an IDE that’s specifically designed for developing Laravel applications, then you should definitely check out PHPStorm. It comes with all the features you need to get the job done, and it’s effortless to use.
Here are some of the things that make PHPStorm the perfect IDE for Laravel development:
Blade support: PHPStorm comes with great support for Laravel’s Blade templating language. All the features you need are there, for example, syntax highlighting, code completion, and more.
Laravel artisan: PHPStorm comes with built-in support for Laravel’s artisan command-line tool. This means you can efficiently run artisan commands from within the IDE, which can save you a lot of time.
Debugging: PHPStorm also has built-in support for debugging Laravel applications. This means you can easily set breakpoints, examine variables, and step through code to find bugs.
Laravel integration: PHPStorm comes with great integration for Laravel applications. This means you can easily view your Laravel logs, artisan commands, and more right from within the IDE.
If you’re looking for an IDE that’s specifically designed for developing Laravel applications, then PHPStorm is definitely the way to go.
Laravel Backup
It is a magical package to sway away your app backup worries by allowing you to create backup into multiple filesystems in one go. Furthermore, your backup is saved in a zip file that comprises every file in the specified directories, including your dump database.
Then, you can store the backup on the filesystems you may have configured. The fun part is it will also report if something goes wrong in your back via Mail, Slack, or any notification provider. Let’s glimpse at what else you get with this package;
- Can monitors the overall health of backup
- Receives notifications
- Scheduling process
- Get a high-level overview of backup
- You can even customize the notifications
Entrust
The tools really take the pain out of adding role-based permission to your Laravel application. Moreover, the package lets you add flexible codes in accordance with the navigations and permissions you want to give your app users. Basically, it contains four tables to categorize roles at different levels, such as Role, Role User, Permissions Role, and Permission. Among the many benefits of using Entrust, some are:
- It offers dynamic navigation
- Simplifies user relations to roles
- Short syntax route filter
- Easy checking for different roles and permissions
- Easier installation
Migration
Laravel migration is a great tool, redefining the way you control databases in your web development. It allows you to create database tables and columns without having to write any SQL code. You can also use it to modify existing database tables and columns as well as share the app’s database schema. Since migrations come paired with the schema builder, developing your app’s database schema becomes a breeze. Some other benefits of Laravel migration are:
- It provides automatic schedule posts
- Automated approvals and workflows
- Customize file names
- Has comparison feature
- Code uses filed sets
Laravel Debugbar
The Laravel debugger is another most powerful tool available for debugging your Laravel applications. It provides a lot of features and is very easy to use. Furthermore, the package allows you to display various debug information in your application views. For example, you can use it to display query information, cache status, environment information, log messages, etc.
Debugbar also provides a friendly, clean interface for displaying this information above your application views. What’s more? Let us see.
- It makes it easy to Debug queries
- Shows the current route/controller
- It can also process during request data
- Custom collectors Views, Route, Gates, Cache
- Configured to display Redirects and (jQuery) Ajax Requests
Socialite
Allowing users to register or log in via social media accounts is a must have functionality for every modern application. However, writing social authentication codes sometimes dreads developers. But when you are using Laravel, you can simply use the Socialite package and seamlessly handle OAuth authentication. It provides an expressive, fluent interface to OAuth authentication with Twitter, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, GitHub, as well as GitLab.
- Goes well with most the social media
- Handles all the boilerplates seamlessly
- Aids to keep your code clean
- Easy to use and provides a high-level authentication
- Open-sourced and licensed under the MIT license
Tinker
Laravel Tinker is a command tool working with PHP artisan for interacting with a database without creating any routes. So, you can use it to interact with your Laravel application on the command line without having to run the entire application. You can use Tinker to create objects, insert or modify the data into the database, and much more.
- Has been used in MacOS
- Create objects and modify the data easily
- Enables interaction with the database effectively
- Command tool that makes use of the command line
- Quickly read data from Laravel applications
Read Also: How Laravel Performance Optimization can Boost your Online Business Growth?
NoCaptcha
NoCaptcha is a simple yet effective tool that will help you keep your Laravel apps or website spam-free. The Laravel Package uses Google’s reCaptcha for validation and protects your web app from bots and spam. But it comes in the form of an API that you will need to acquire. Nevertheless, using this API, you can allow your users to quickly and securely verify that they’re human with just one click.
Platforms For Learning Laravel
Developers and companies love Laravel because it allows them to use code written by experienced programmers rather than writing from scratch. Although Laravel has a bit of a steep learning curve, its documentation, tools, and tutorials make it straightforward to learn the framework. Therefore, even with moderate PHP experience, newbies can quickly get on with Laravel development.
We have also extracted some highly recommended Laravel learning tools here for you.
Laracasts
If you want to learn Laravel, one of the best resources available is Laracasts. Laracasts is a web-based learning platform that offers high-quality video tutorials on Laravel as well as other web development topics.
There are several reasons why Laracasts is an excellent resource for learning Laravel. Firstly, the tutorials are made by Jeffrey Way, who is a well-known and respected figure in the Laravel community. Secondly, the tutorials are well-produced and easy to follow. Third, they offer a wide range of topics, so you can learn everything from the basics of Laravel to more advanced topics like creating RESTful APIs.
If you’re looking for a high-quality, affordable resource to learn Laravel, then Laracasts is an excellent option.
Team Treehouse
Another excellent resource to learn about Laravel Team Treehouse is definitely worth checking out. Indeed, the platform has put together a great collection of tutorials that will take you from a beginner Laravel developer to an expert level. There are courses from Laravel basics to templating and building RestAPI with Laravel.
Moreover, each segment in their programs contains questions, tests, educator notes, downloadable files, and more to make learning effective. Not to mention, the membership fee is well worth it if you’re serious about learning this robust framework.
Sitepoint
Offering a bunch of effective tutorials and courses on Laravel and how-to guides on achieving some of the essential functionalities, such as real-time notification, social logins, and more, SitePoint appears to be a must-visit platform for Laravel developers.
Laravel Core Adventure
As a Laravel enthusiast, you cannot miss out on Laravel Core Adventure. It is a video series by Christoph Rumpel revealing what is under the hood of Laravel with profound explanations. In addition, there are multiple videos for each concept with the high-level formation, clarifying the Laravel framework internals.
Laravel Daily
It’s a paid site by Povilas Korop, who also has a YouTube channel, “Laravel Business.” Both of his courses cover interesting topics on Laravel, such as invoice app development, mastering Eloquent, building RestAPI with Laravel, and more. The courses are well-documented and logically structured, along with code examples available on GitHub.
Famous Laravel Communities
The community of any technology is crucial in software development. It acts as a backbone connecting developers with each other to discuss and solve coding issues faster together. If we talk about the Laravel community, you just don’t have to worry. Because here we are about to unleash various platforms you can rely on for Laravel updates, tips, reusable codes, and more.
LaravelIO
It is a growing portal for Laravel problem-solving, knowledge sharing, and discussing Laravel development matters. As of writing this post, there are 49,830 members. You can also ask and find answers to questions as well as share your experience by solving unresolved threads.
Larachat Slack Channel
It is a Slack-based forum focused on the Laravel Framework. Larachat is one of the most active sites, with around 35,471 members. They also want it to make the world’s biggest PHP virtual user group that lets developers chat and share their knowledge. Besides, they maintain various channels dedicated to different topics, such as packages, APIs, tools, testing, etc. The bifurcation of channels makes it handy for Laravel and also PHP developers to navigate and find the solution.
Laravel Podcast
The Laravel Podcast offers a quick key to keeping up with what’s new and learning about Laravel packages. They also discuss queries, events, and possibilities of Laravel.
Cloudways Laravel
Another growing community of developers, Cloudways provides the latest posts and articles on Laravel and PHP, among other top-notch technologies. From how to optimize the performance, integrate PayPal Payment Gateway, and best security practices to insights into the latest version, you can find helpful Laravel content on the platform.
Laracast Forum
Despite being an official Laravel framework learning platform, Laracast offers one-of-a-kind community support for developers. In fact, you can find Laravel developers around the world asking and getting responses to their questions every few minutes. In addition, the platform allows developers to hop on their preferred subject directly, namely Laravel, servers, testing, etc.
Laravel Ecosystem To Complement Development
When it comes to the Laravel ecosystem, oh boy, it is like a treasure for developers. It is beyond just a framework. It offers a whole environment of supporting tools and plugins, making development lightning fast and efficient. At the same time, a considerable number of tools confuse developers in finding the relevant ones for their projects. Therefore, we decided to include the best Laravel tools in this article.
Laravel Nova
Beautifully crafted and carefully designed administration panel Laravel Nova leads developers to be more productive. It brings valuable features, such as inline relationship editing, automatic field filters, a responsive layout, conditional fields, dashboard notifications, and more.
However, administrating your underlying database records using Eloquent is the primary feature of Nova. To do so, you need to define a Nova “resource” that corresponds to your app’s Eloquent model. Among others, some of its notable features are;
- A whole CRUD interface for the Eloquent models;
- Easily integrate with your new or existing Laravel application;
- Shows custom metrics of your app along with query helpers included;
- Offers CLI generators for scaffolding custom tools;
- Built-in filters for “soft deleted” resources to write custom filters;
- Ability to integrate it with Laravel Scout for blazing fast search results;
- Equipped with support for the latest Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge.
Laravel Dusk
It is an exceptional package that every Laravel developer should use. Dusk is a package that performs thorough tests on Laravel applications from a user’s point of view. The package also has expressive browser automation and uses a standalone Chromedriver. Thus, it eliminates the tricky steps you need to take in ChromeDriver and PHP WebDriver. Overall, the package simplifies the testing process.
Laravel Echo
Laravel Echo is a library to allow you to leverage the potency of WebSockets in your Laravel applications. Besides, it makes building common and complex WebSocktes interactions easier. Moreover, it allows you to;
- Add real-time updates to your app;
- Use echo sockets;
- Provide a nice and clean syntax;
- Avail public and private channels;
- Use complex features, such as authentication and authorization;
- Share same event names and broadcast P2P events;
Laravel MediaLibrary
Laravel MediaLibrary is an easy and fast way to upload images with the Laravel Eloquent model. The package also empowers you to store images, get images, and generate thumbnail images.
- Using the package, you can take any media file from the web via URL;
- You can also employ a custom directory structure;
- Ability to define file conversions and different image sizes, adjustments, effects, etc.;
- Offers automatic images optimization;
- Easy to work with and has a fluent API.
Laravel Envoy
Laravel Envoy is a tool that comes with minimal syntax, allowing you to run common tasks on your remote server. The package also lets you use an Envoy.blade.php script specifically designed to provide a basic “zero-downtime” deployment option. Though Envoy is not specific to Laravel or PHP, it does use Blade templating language to script actions. Hence, it makes deployment super easy for Laravel developers.
- Supports only Mac and Linux operating systems;
- Offers multiple server execution;
- Simplifies tasks and deployment process;
- Sends notifications via Slack and Discord after completing tasks;
- Easy to set up.
Read Also: How To Hire Laravel Developers For Your Project?
BotMan Studio
Undoubtedly, Bots have become an integral part of web apps to provide an engaging customer support experience, and BotMan is just no different. BotMan Studio is a bundled version of BotMan that makes chatbot development easier, providing tools such as testing tools, web driver implementation, and more.
- Support various platforms, such as– Slack, Amazon Alexa, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, etc.
- Can use its logic to write a chatbot for an app;
- Inbuilt natural language processing.
Laravel Tenancy
If you are building a SaaS application with Laravel, make sure you know about this package. The tenancy is an open-source toolkit, enabling easy scaffolding of a multi-tenant SaaS platform on top of the Laravel framework. You can also use it to manipulate many features efficiently.
- Clear separation of assets and databases;
- Easy to use and flexible to scale to enterprise magnitude;
- Quickly integrate with Laravel;
- Offers Event-driven extensible architecture;
- Lets you add tenant-specific configurations, codes, routes, etc.
Laravel Telescope
If you are looking for a helpful debugging Laravel resource for your local development environment, Telescope it is. Laravel Telescope is an open-source debug tool with an elegant user interface, allowing you to monitor and debug numerous parts of your apps. It also provides you with the app insights, for example, log entries, databases, emails, notifications, cache operations, coming requests, etc.
- You get clear insights into your app data;
- Lets you add the list of emails;
- Reduces bugs and eases the development process;
- Offers custom migration;
- Comes with a friendly interface.
Laravel WebSocket
Take this package if you don’t want any hassle in implementing WebSockets. Laravel WebSocket can entirely handle the server-side of WebSockets as well as incoming WebSocket connections. In addition, the package offers a real-time debug dashboard with statistical charts, giving you insights into your WebSocket app metrics.
- You can create custom WebSocket controllers;
- Compatible with Laravel Echo;
- Includes all the features of Pusher;
- Support multi-tenancy;
- Auto updated and has extensive documentation.
Lumen
Lumen is a mini PHP framework created by Taylor Otwell as an alternative to the Laravel framework. So, if you don’t want to use the entire Laravel framework, it’s for you. Also, Lumen is best for microservices and API development without missing out on the speed and high response time.
- Easy to use a micro-service framework;
- Also works with the Eloquent ORM, Queues, etc.,
- Simplifies routing, caching, and other processes;
- Light version and take response less;
- Supports integrations by third-party.
Laravel Spark
If you want an effective solution to meet the recurring billing process in your Laravel SaaS application, Laravel Spark has got you covered. It is a cloud-based software that empowers you to customize your subscription plans in your app. With Laravel Spark, you can simplify how your customers subscribe and update plans, their payment details, as well as download invoices.
- Brings valuable features, for example, two-factor authentication, invoicing, password reset, payments, etc.;
- Support Stripe and Paddle;
- Highly customizable;
- Support team collaboration;
- Provide a well-designed billing management panel.
Laravel Scout
Laravel Scout is a package that allows you to add a full-text search function to your Laravel application. Basically, Scout provides a driver-based full-text search solution by making it easy to index and search the contents of your Eloquent models. It supports a blazing fast and hosted search service– Algolia.
- Easy to use and simplifies text search function;
- Compatible with different platforms;
- Once installed and configured, Scout automatically syncs Eloquent model changes to search indexes.
Laravel Passport
Laravel Passport simplifies the authentication system set up in your API. Since the package is built on top of the League OAuth2 server, it employs an OAuth2 server to perform authentication. Using Laravel Passport, you can implement token authorization easily and securely. The reason is that it creates tokens that request API but grants access only to validated tokens.
- Helps set up the OAuth2 server using a simple command line tool;
- Offers necessary database migrations, controllers, and routes;
- Equipped with pre-built Vue.JS components;
- Secure way to apply token authorization;
- A straightforward tool with helpful documentation.
Laravel Horizon
The Laravel Horizon package allows you to manage Laravel queues. The queue manager lets you have complete control over your Redis queues. Using Horizon, you can generate analytics, configure jobs, and monitor queues-related tasks, such as throughput, failure, and run-time. Above all, the package provides you with a great dashboard, making metrics monitoring a breeze.
- Open-source package;
- Displays all queues and job information using an elegant dashboard;
- Provides insights into pending, completed, and failed jobs;
- Allows monitoring real-time metrics;
- Assign and monitor the jobs using tags.
Botble
Botble is a Laravel-based Content Management System that provides powerful features to build websites for any purpose. For example;
- Highly responsive and compatible with significant screen resolutions;
- Offers a powerful Permission System to manage user, team, and roles by permissions;
- Makes it easy to manage users by permissions.
- Avoid boilerplate code and provide page, blog, menu, and contact modules;
- Supports Google Analytics as well as facilitates social media sharing;
- Customizable admin template to match your taste.
Laravel Forge
The service Laravel Forge saves you from server management hassles. It is an effective tool for configuring and deploying web applications. With Forge, you can also automate the deployment of web applications that use a PHP server. Besides that, the Laravel tool has many useful features, such as:
- Scheduling recurring tasks to run on the server;
- Push to deploy, making code deployment easier;
- Integrates with LetsEncrypt, allowing you to obtain free TLS (SSL) certificates;
- Efficient team collaboration via server’s management dashboard;
- Security updates are installed automatically;
- Real-time server monitor and notifications on any change;
- Compatible with any PHP framework.
Laravel Vapor
Powered by AWS Lambda, Laravel Vapor is a serverless deployment platform, allowing developers to launch their Laravel infrastructure. Setting up a project on the platform is easy as ABC, while deployment of a standard Laravel app is fast as lightning. Find below more specialties of Laravel Vapor.
- Eliminates concerns about servers, configuration, and operating system updates;
- Allows linking your own AWS account;
- Provides zero downtime deployment
- Lets you rollback your entire application in seconds on mistakes;
- Vapor CLI to deploy apps right from the CL pipeline;
- Monitors crucial metrics of databases, cache, and apps;
- Offers a free, auto-renewing SSL certificate during deployment.
Laravel Chipper CI
Chipper CI is an exclusive Laravel Continuous Integration tool. It will break you out from the “configure, test, wait, repeat” loop, making testing and deployment quick and easy for Laravel apps. Additionally, Chipper CI comes loaded with everything Laravel development needs pre-configured, from PHP versions to services.
Laravel Flare
Flare is a life-saving service especially built for Laravel error tracking. It tracks all errors in your app if anything goes wrong. Not only tracking, but it also suggests solutions and relevant documentation for common issues. Flare also couples with Ignition–Laravel error page, enabling tracking production errors. Here are reasons why you may need Laravel Flare.
- To get instant solutions and documentation for common problems solving;
- Offers simple UX and beautiful UI that reduce bug fixing time;
- Collects local and production errors;
- Coupled with the Ignition error page to lets you fix issues with one click;
- Easy to share exceptions and collaborate to fix the mistakes;
Laravel Shift
Are you looking for a solution that keeps your Laravel version updated? Then go with the Laravel Shift without a second thought and let bots handle all the shifty work efficiently. To get started with Shift, all you need is to sign-in GitHub/Bitbucket/GitLab, purchase an upgrade package, and voila. Now, you can review the pull request Shift automatically creates.
Access the cheat sheet of 10 top-notch Laravel packages and tools now!
Did you find your best Laravel tool already?
Laravel makes development a fast, easy, and effective solution. With this lightweight framework, you can create high-performing web apps for any purpose. Besides its own strengths, Laravel has a broad ecosystem. We put some of the noteworthy packages, Laravel tools, and resources in this post that will boost your productivity.
However, the Laravel ecosystem contains a lot more valuable tools that we will plan to present to you soon. Until then, use the resources we have mentioned here if you already use the Laravel framework. If not, you can start right away by hiring Laravel developers.