Been using Laravel for some time, and now feel ready to build a well-architected application from scratch? Excellent! Together, let's build a light version of Facebook, called Larabook.
To begin our new project, let's setup a virtual machine, using Vagrant and Laravel Homestead.
Please note: I did not actually followed this lesson, so the projet in this repository may be a little bit different
2. Dependencies
There are a number of dependencies that we'll need to pull in for this project. While even a few years ago, this might have been a pain, luckily that's no longer the case, thanks to Composer.
In this lesson, let's get connected to our database, and then figure out how to access it from a GUI, like Sequel Pro.
**Please note: All .env.*.php files are of course not committed, please check the lesson to know how to create them. **
Although we won't focus too much on design, naturally, we need something nice and simple to look at. So, let's begin that process by leveraging Twitter Bootstrap, and setting up our first master/layout page.
This includes some basic design boilerplate work. Let's focus on the navbar and homepage in this episode.
Let's put a system into place, that will automatically watch our Sass files for changes, compile them, and then autoprefix any relevant CSS3. We'll use the excellent Gulp tool to allow for this.
Naturally, before a user can begin posting status updates, they first need to register for Larabook. Let's use Codeception to help drive and test this process.
8. Users
In the previous lesson, we stopped just short of creating a migration for our users. Let's tackle that now, and return the tests to green.
Of course, form validation is essential for any web app. Larabook is no different; so let's work on that in this episode.
For larger applications that need to be maintained for years, it makes sense to take a step back, and think about architecture. Let's use commands to describe the various instructions that our app offers, as well as a command bus to manage the act of translating these commands into handler classes.
11. Domain Events
Because we've taken some time to structure our app in this manner, we now have a really simple way to queue and listen for domain events. Let me show you.
How many times have you created the necessary views to display flash messages? Lots? Well, in this episode, I'll show you how we can tackle this very quickly.
Right now, we can register a user; however, we still need to provide more feedback to signal that they are, in fact, logged in. Let's focus on that in this episode, along with a few other tidbits.
14. Signing In
Now that a user can successfully register, we next need to give them a way to login and logout!
If you're working along, you might have encountered a confusing Codeception bug. Don't worry: as they say, it's Codeception, not you. Let's take a look.
It's time to allow our authenticated users to publish statuses to their profile. We have a number of things to do in this episode, so grab a cup of coffee, and let's do this.
So far, we've exclusively created functional tests. However, often, it can be beneficial to test at a lower level. In this episode, we'll setup Codeception to execute our integration tests, using a repository as an example. Hopefully, you'll see just how easy it can be.
At least for now, rather than making Larabook users upload profile images, we'll simply leverage the popular Gravatar service. Along the way, I'll show you three different ways to "store" this logic for fetching the appropriate Gravatar.
Right now, the status page looks terrible. I know we're interested in the code, but let's take at least ten minutes to make it look prettier.
So far, we've been manually creating records. Naturally, though, it makes sense to mass-create users and statuses, for the purposes of testing in the browser. Let me show you a streamlined way to accomplish this.
We need to offer some way for users to browse through all registered members of Larabook. That way, they can have the option of "following" any developers who post interesting statuses. Let's handle that in this lesson, while also implementing pagination.
22. Profiles
In the previous episode, we managed to display all registered Larabook users; however, we stopped just short of offering a way to link to their respective profiles. Let's tackle that in this episode.
Before we move on to allowing Larabook users to follow one another, let's first take a short break and do a bit of miscellaneous refactoring. Luckily, because we have a growing test suite, we should be able to tackle this with a good sense of confidence.
24. Following Users
At this point, we need to offer the ability for Larabook users to follow one another. This way, in their respective feeds, they can see, not only their own statuses, but all the statuses of those they follow. Over the next two lessons, I'll demonstrate two different ways to tackle this. Let's get started with the first approach!
We've mostly implemented our "follow" functionality; however, I'd like to do some cleanup, and also write some tests.
In this episode, we'll take a stroll through the site, while reviewing some key sections that need to be tweaked.
When a user signs up for Larabook, we need to send them a welcome email. Hmm - what's a clean way to implement this?
28. Sass Partials
Though Larabook doesn't have much CSS, it's still important that we structure and organize it in a maintainable way. Let's extract some partials and modules!
**This lesson is using the design made by @amite that you can find here : https://gist.github.com/amite/593eb62dc1ca013999c1
What if one of our Larabook members forgets their password? Right now, they're completely out of luck! Clearly, this must be fixed. Let's implement a solution in ten minutes.
30. Status Comments
A core feature of Larabook hasn't yet been implemented. Users need to have the ability to comment on existing statuses. We'll implement that very thing in this episode.
Let's imagine that we've invested far more than just a few hours worth of time into this application. It's now time to push it to production. To do this, we'll leverage both DigitalOcean and Laravel Forge. Hopefully, you'll see just how easy this is. Our community is spoiled!