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Informations about the package generators
Forked from JeffreyWay/Laravel-4-Generators.
This package updates the views provided by Jeffrey Way's original works to Bootstrap 3. The original documentation from Way's works follows. The instructions have been updated to reflect any changes within this package.
This Laravel 4 package provides a variety of generators to speed up your development process. These generators include:
generate:model
generate:controller
generate:seed
generate:view
generate:migration
generate:resource
generate:scaffold
generate:form
generate:test
generate:pivot
<-- NEW!!
Prefer a Video Walk-through?
Installation
Begin by installing this package through Composer. Edit your project's composer.json
file to require dollar/generators
.
"require": {
"laravel/framework": "4.0.*",
"dollar/generators": "dev-master"
},
"minimum-stability" : "dev"
Next, update Composer from the Terminal:
composer update
Once this operation completes, the final step is to add the service provider. Open app/config/app.php
, and add a new item to the providers array.
'Way\Generators\GeneratorsServiceProvider'
That's it! You're all set to go. Run the artisan
command from the Terminal to see the new generate
commands.
php artisan
There's also a Sublime Text plugin available to assist with the generators. Definitely use it, but not before you learn the syntax below.
Usage
Think of generators as an easy way to speed up your workflow. Rather than opening the models directory, creating a new file, saving it, and adding the class, you can simply run a single generate command.
- Migrations
- Models
- Views
- Seeds
- Resources
- Scaffolding
- Forms
- Tests
- Pivot Tables
Migrations
Laravel 4 offers a migration generator, but it stops just short of creating the schema (or the fields for the table). Let's review a couple examples, using generate:migration
.
php artisan generate:migration create_posts_table
If we don't specify the fields
option, the following file will be created within app/database/migrations
.
Notice that the generator is smart enough to detect that you're trying to create a table. When naming your migrations, make them as description as possible. The migration generator will detect the first word in your migration name and do its best to determine how to proceed. As such, for create_posts_table
, the keyword is "create," which means that we should prepare the necessary schema to create a table.
If you instead use a migration name along the lines of add_user_id_to_posts_table
, in that case, the keyword is "add," signaling that we intend to add rows to an existing table. Let's see what that generates.
php artisan generate:migration add_user_id_to_posts_table
This will prepare the following boilerplate:
Notice how, this time, we're not doing Schema::create
.
Keywords
When writing migration names, use the following keywords to provide hints for the generator.
create
ormake
(create_users_table
)add
orinsert
(add_user_id_to_posts_table
)remove
ordrop
ordelete
(remove_user_id_from_posts_table
)
Generating Schema
This is pretty nice, but let's take things a step further and also generate the schema, using the fields
option.
php artisan generate:migration create_posts_table --fields="title:string, body:text"
Before we decipher this new option, let's see the output:
Nice! A few things to notice here:
- The generator will automatically set the
id
as the primary key. - It also will add the timestamps, as that's more common than not.
- It parsed the
fields
options, and added those fields. - The drop method is smart enough to realize that, in reverse, the table should be dropped entirely.
To declare fields, use a comma-separated list of key:value:option sets, where key
is the name of the field, value
is the column type, and option
is a way to specify indexes and such, like unique
or nullable
. Here are some examples:
--fields="first:string, last:string"
--fields="age:integer, yob:date"
--fields="username:string:unique, age:integer:nullable"
--fields="name:string:default('John'), email:string:unique:nullable"
--fields="username:string[30]:unique, age:integer:nullable"
Please make note of the last example, where we specify a character limit: string[30]
. This will produce $table->string('username', 30)->unique();
It is possible to destroy the table by issuing:
php artisan generate:migration destroy_posts_table
If you'd like to have an accurate artisan rollback option set the fields
option as well:
php artisan generate:migration destroy_posts_table --fields="title:string, body:text"
As a final demonstration, let's run a migration to remove the completed
field from a tasks
table.
php artisan generate:migration remove_completed_from_tasks_table --fields="completed:boolean"
This time, as we're using the "remove" keyword, the generator understands that it should drop a column, and add it back in the down()
method.
Models
php artisan generate:model Post
This will create the file, app/models/Post.php
and insert the following boilerplate:
Views
php artisan generate:view dog
This command will generate app/views/dog.blade.php
and a simple string, for convenience.
The dog.blade.php view.
As with all of the commands, you may specify a --path
option to place this file elsewhere.
php artisan generate:view index --path=views/dogs
Now, we get: app/views/dogs/index.blade.php
.
Seeds
Laravel 4 provides us with a flexible way to seed new tables.
php artisan generate:seed dogs
Set the argument to the name of the table that you'd like a seed file for. This will generate app/database/seeds/DogsTableSeeder.php
and populate it with:
This command will also update app/database/seeds/DatabaseSeeder.php
to include a call to this new seed class, as required by Laravel.
To fully seed the dogs
table:
- Within the
$dogs
array, add any number of arrays, containing the necessary rows. - Return to the Terminal and run Laravel's
db:seed command
(php artisan db:seed
).
Resources
Think of the resource generator as the big enchilada. It calls all of its sibling generate commands. Assuming the following command:
php artisan generate:resource dog --fields="name:string"
The following actions will take place:
- Creates a
create_dogs_table
migration, with a name column. - Creates a
Dog.php
model. - Creates a
views/dogs
folder, containing theindex
,show
,create
, andedit
views. - Creates a
database/seeds/DogsTableSeeder.php
seed file. - Updates
DatabaseSeeder.php
to runDogsTableSeeder
- Creates
controllers/DogsController.php
, and fills it with restful methods. - Updates
routes.php
to include:Route::resource('dogs', 'DogsController')
. - Creates a
tests/controllers/DogsControllerTest.php
file, and fills it with some boilerplate tests to get you started.
Please note that the resource name is singular - the same as how you would name your model.
Workflow
Let's create a resource for displaying dogs in a restful way.
php artisan generate:resource dog --fields="name:string, age:integer"
Next, we'll seed this new dogs
table. Open database/seeds/DogsTableSeeder.php
and add a couple of rows. Remember, you only need to edit the $dogs
array within this file.
$dogs = [
['name' => 'Sparky', 'age' => 5],
['name' => 'Joe', 'age' => 11]
];
Now, we migrate the database and seed the dogs
table.
php artisan migrate
php artisan db:seed
Finally, let's display these two dogs, when accessing the dogs/
route. Edit controllers/DogsController.php
, and update the index
method, like so:
public function index()
{
return View::make('dogs.index')
->with('dogs', Dog::all());
}
The last step is to update the view to display each of the posts that was passed to it. Open views/dogs/index.blade.php
and add:
<ul>
@foreach($dogs as $dog)
<li>{{ $dog->name }} : {{ $dog->age }}</li>
@endforeach
</ul>
Okay, okay, we're not using a layout file with the proper HTML. Who cares; this is just an example, fool.
Anyhow, we're all set. Run the server, and browse to localhost:8000/dogs
to view your list.
php artisan serve
- Sparky : 5
- Joe : 11
Isn't that way faster than manually doing all of that writing? To finish up, let's run the tests to make sure that everything is working, as expected.
phpunit
And...it's green!
Scaffolding
Think of scaffolding as an extension of a resource. It has the exact same interface.
The only difference is that it will handle all of the boilerplate. This can be particularly useful for prototyping - or even learning how to do basic things, such as delete a record from a database table, or build a form, or perform validation on that form.
Forms
This handy new generator allows you to, with a single command, generate the necessary HTML for a form, based on attributes from a provided model. Perhaps an example is in order:
Assuming that I do have a Tweet
model and its associated tweet
table, this command will output:
Pretty neat, huh? It read the attributes and data types, and prepared the markup for you! One less thing to worry about!
Specifying the Form's Method
But what if you intend to update a resource, rather than create a new one? Well, in that case, use the --method
option.
This will mostly generate the same HTML, however, the Form::open()
method will be adjusted, as needed:
The method option will accept any number of values (add, edit, update, post, create, etc.), but, essentially, you're just telling it whether you are creating or editing a resource. As such, there's only two possible outputs: POST
and PATCH
(the former being the default).
Custom HTML
What if you don't like the idea of using an unordered list for a form? Use the --html
option, along with the name of the element that you'd prefer to use:
Now, the generator we'll present the elements within div
s!
Copying and Saving
At least for now, and unlike the other generators in this package, this command will output the form, at which point you can copy and paste it where needed. Of course, you can always pipe the output to the clipboard or save to a file, using existing tools. For instance:
Tests
Use generate:test
when you need to create a new PHPUnit test class. Here's an example:
This will produce app/tests/FooTest.php
.
Pivot Tables
Creating joinable/pivot tables can sometimes be confusing.
- Should the table names be plural?
- In what order do we write the table names to make Laravel happy?
- What fields should be in the pivot table?
This process can be automated now. Simply call the generate:pivot
command, and provide the names of the tables that should be joinable.
For example, a post can have many tags, and a tag can have many posts.
Run the following command to create the necessary pivot table.
It doesn't matter which order you provide the table names (or whether
you pluralize them or not). The command will correctly create a
post_tag
migration that has post_id
and tag_id
fields.
Finally, simply migrate the database to create it.
Pivot table finished!
To put it all together, let's do it from scratch. We need a posts table, a tags table, and the connecting pivot table for the two. We can tackle this easily with the generators.