Download the PHP package cnvs/canvas without Composer

Introduction

Canvas is a fully open source package to extend your existing Laravel application and get you up-and-running with a blog in just a few minutes. In addition to a distraction-free writing experience, you can view monthly trends on your content, get insights into reader traffic and more!

System Requirements

• PHP >= 7.3
• Laravel >= 6.0
• One of the five supported databases by Laravel

Installation

You may use composer to install Canvas into your Laravel project:

Publish the assets and primary configuration file using the canvas:install Artisan command:

Create a symbolic link to ensure file uploads are publicly accessible from the web using the storage:link Artisan command:

Configuration

After publishing Canvas's assets, a primary configuration file will be located at config/canvas.php. This file allows you to customize various aspects of how your application uses the package.

Canvas exposes its UI at /canvas by default. This can be changed by updating either the path or domain option:

Sometimes, you may want to apply custom roles or permissions when accessing Canvas. You can create and attach any additional middleware here:

Canvas uses the storage disk for media uploads. You may configure the different filesystem options here:

Roles & Permissions

Canvas comes with 3 pre-defined roles out-of-the-box:

• Contributor (A user who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them)
• Editor (A user who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users)
• Admin (A user who can do everything and see everything)

When you install a fresh version of Canvas, you'll have a default admin user set up automatically. From there, you can perform any basic CRUD actions on users, as well as assign their various roles.

Canvas UI

Want a beautiful, Medium.com-inspired frontend? Use the canvas:ui Artisan command to install the scaffolding:

After generating the frontend scaffolding, your package.json file will include the necessary dependencies to install and compile:

That's it! You can navigate to /canvas-ui and check it out for yourself. You're free to modify any aspect of it that you'd like.

Unsplash Integration

Want access to the entire Unsplash library? Set up a new application at https://unsplash.com/oauth/applications, grab your access key, and update config/canvas.php:

E-mail Notifications

Want a weekly summary? Canvas allows users to receive a weekly digest of their authored content. Once your application is configured for sending mail, update config/canvas.php:

Since this feature runs on Laravel's Scheduler, you'll need to add the following cron entry to your server:

API

Installing Canvas UI will be the most efficient way to get up and running with a frontend interface to display your data. However many users will opt for creating this by hand since it gives flexibility to their design aesthetic.

Using the published scope will allow you to only retrieve posts that have a published date in the past:

You can also retrieve the inverse with a draft scope:

To return a single post, you'll likely want to find it by a given slug, as well as include related entities such as:

Important: In the same method that returns a post, make sure you fire the PostViewed event, or else a view/visit will not be recorded.

You can find a tag by a given slug:

And a similar query can be used for a topic:

Users can be retrieved by their id, username, or email:

Additionally, you can return the users' published posts with their associated topic:

Updates

Canvas follows Semantic Versioning and increments versions as MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH numbers.

• Major versions will contain breaking changes, so follow the upgrade guide for a step-by-step breakdown
• Minor and patch versions should never contain breaking changes, so you can safely update the package by following the steps below:

You may update your Canvas installation using composer:

Run any new migrations using the canvas:migrate Artisan command:

Re-publish the assets using the canvas:publish Artisan command:

To keep the assets up-to-date and avoid issues in future updates, you may add the canvas:publish command to the post-update-cmd scripts in your application's composer.json file:

Contributing

Thank you for considering contributing to Canvas! The contribution guide can be found here.

Testing

Run the tests with:

Troubleshooting

If you're running into problems, feel free to open a new issue or check the Discussions forum to see if anyone else has run into something similar.

License

Canvas is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.

Credits

• @austintoddj
• @talvbansal
• @reliq
• @mithicher
• @themsaid
• @NinaLimpi