Laravel Posts

The Stripe Customer Portal is very useful for managing customer subscriptions like Upgrade, Downgrade, and Renew.

Customers can review their invoices directly and also check their history.

Portal billing setting

Do login into your stripe account

Navigate to the portal settings to configure the portal, and do below billing settings

Create Product

First of all, we need to create products. Follow the below process for creating products.

Click on the “Products” menu from the sidebar and click on the “Add Product” button on the top right corner of the products page and create a product.

Here is an example of how to create a product.

Create two or three products as shown below.

Select product In portal settings

If you want to allow your customer to change their subscription by an upgrade, downgrade, cancel or renew you need to set products in your portal setting.

Now navigate to customer portal settings again, in the Products section, you will find a dropdown “Find or add a product..”, click on it you will find the plan you have added, select the price of this product.

Don’t forget to save all these settings.

Then do the setup of your business information, also do branding settings in the “Appearance” section, and save it.

Once you are done with settings, you can preview the customer portal by clicking the Preview button beside the save button.

This will launch a preview of the portal so you can see how customers will use it for managing their subscriptions and billing details.

Integrate into Laravel

• Get you API keys
  • Go to “Developers > API keys” here you will find your “Publishable key” and “Secret key

• Create customer using stripe dashboard or by API
  • Create customer by Stripe API.
  • First of all, you’ll need to set your stripe secret key. For development mode, you can use test mode keys, but for production, you need to use your live mode keys

\Stripe\Stripe::setApiKey('sk_test_YOUR_KEY');
$customer = \Stripe\Customer::create([undefined]);

• Once you create a customer using stripe API, now you can create a billing session for that customer using stripe API.
  • Create a billing session of the customer by API

\Stripe\Stripe::setApiKey('sk_test_YOUR_KEY'); 
\Stripe\BillingPortal\Session::create([    
      'customer'   => 'cus_HnKDAQNjBniyFh',    
      'return_url' => 'https://example.com/subscription'
]);

You’ll get a response, like the below object:

{
  "id": "pts_c5cfgf8gjfgf73m5748g6",
  "object"    : "billing_portal.session",
  "created"   : 453543534,   
  "customer"  : "cus_bGFsnjJDcSiJu",   
  "livemode"  : false,   
  "return_url": "https://example.com/subscription" 
}

In the response body, there is a URL attribute:

Now redirect your customer to this URL immediately. For security purposes, this URL will expire in a few minutes.

After redirecting the customer to this URL, the portal will open and customers can manage their subscriptions and billing details in the portal. customers can return to the app by clicking the Return link on your company’s name or logo within the portal on the left side. They’ll redirect to the return_url you have provided at the time of creating the session or redirect URL set in your portal settings.

Listen to Webhooks

You must have a question, what is this Webhook!!!

It’s just an event, which will fire when a customer does any changes in his/her subscription in the portal, we can listen to this event in our app and make appropriate changes.

For example,

If a customer cancels his/her subscription in the portal, then how we will know about it!!

For it, when customers do any changes in his/her subscription

“customer.subscription.updated” event will be fired and we can listen for this event and, get to know the customer has changed subscription so we need to do appropriate changes in our app also.

Set webhook in your app

In the webhooks.php (in routes folder) file set up a route to handle webhook.

You can use the Laravel Cashier Package (https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/billing)to handle webhooks.

To set up a webhook for your portal navigate to the “Developers > Webhooks” menu you will find the below screen, here I have added a webhook to handle subscription cancel and update events, it will fire when customers update subscription, and you will receive it.

Click on the “Add endpoint” button and the below pop up will open. In Endpoint URL set the route you have created in the webhooks.php file. Select subscription updated and deleted events.

All done.

For more details, you can use stripe customer portal integration

Livewire is a very awesome thing that I have ever seen, the old school developers are still using the jquery and ajax concept to not refresh the page. But forget the jquery and ajax stuff. If you are good at PHP then you can do the same with Laravel Livewire.

Wait what?

Load dynamic data on the page without using ajax? Yes, it is possible with Laravel Livewire. So that is all about laravel livewire, and in this tutorial, we will see how to build laravel pagination with laravel livewire.

Let's start and I hope you have already set up the livewire. Let's say you already have created a component named UsersListing Now in the users listing, we want to paginate all users and we will list 10 records per page.

How to use pagination with Laravel Livewire

Livewire provides a trait called WithPagination and you have to add it into your component UsersListing. Check out the following code:

use Livewire\WithPagination; 
use Livewire\Component; 
class UsersListing extends Component 
{ 
   use WithPagination;

   public function render() 
     { 
       return view('livewire.users.index', [ 'users' => User::paginate(10), ]); 
     } 
} 

And to load pagination you have to add the following code:

@foreach ($users as $user) ... 

@endforeach {{ $users->links() }} 

That's it, and your laravel pagination now works like charm without page refresh. There is much more about pagination like how to use it with a custom view, how to use it with a custom theme. We will see it in our next tutorial, until then enjoy the code

The OneSingnal is the market leader in push notification providers. It provides mobile + web push, email & in-app messages, and an easy way to send notifications. OneSignal provides official core PHP APIs but not the Laravel package. We are using OneSignal in many projects and write a bunch of line code in all projects where we needed OneSingnal.

One day I had an idea in my mind why I should not write a Laravel wrapper for OneSignal?. Finally, I wrote the shailesh-ladumor/one-signal Laravel Wrapper for it. Using this package, we can write neat & clean code and just a few lines of code.

OneSignal add this package in his official docs here

You can watch the following video tutorial or follow the article.

This package also works with the previous Laravel version.

Today we are going to see how we can use Laravel OneSignal Wrapper in Laravel. Let's see step by step, how we can do that.

Spet 1: Install Packages

Install shailesh-ladumor/one-signal by the following command,

composer require ladumor/one-signal

Step 2: Publish the config file

Run the following command to publish config file,

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Ladumor\OneSignal\OneSignalServiceProvider"

Step 3: Add Provider

Add the provider to your config/app.php into the provider section if using a lower version of Laravel,

Ladumor\OneSignal\OneSignalServiceProvider::class

Step 4: Add Facade

Add the Facade to your config/app.php into aliases section,

'OneSignal' => \Ladumor\OneSignal\OneSignal::class

Configure a .env file with following keys

ONE_SIGNAL_APP_ID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX 
ONE_SIGNAL_AUTHORIZE=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX X 
ONE_SIGNAL_AUTH_KEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

ONE_SIGNAL_AUTH_KEY is optional if you do not want to create an app. I hope you are familiar with the One Signal Platform and know how to get APP_ID and AUTHORIZE. If not, you should see the below image for how to get it.

So, we are done. Let's check how to send push notifications.

Check out this code to send a push notification.

use Ladumor\OneSignal\OneSignal; 
$fields['include_player_ids'] = ['xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx-yyyyy'] 
$message = 'hey!! This is a test push.!' OneSignal::sendPush($fields, $message);

Recently, the Laravel team announced a Laravel Fortify. A framework agnostic authentication backend for Laravel applications. It provides registration, authentication along with two-factor authentication.

As said above, it is framework agnostic, so it doesn't provide any blade views with it. You can implement views of your choice of the frontend. Blade, Vue, React with Bootstrap or TailwindCSS, or any other CSS framework.

Today we are going to see how we can use Laravel Fortify with one of the most popular Bootstrap 4 theme AdminLTE v3.

We can actually do that in minutes with the package that we already developed called Laravel UI AdminLTE

This package also works with the previous laravel version to have an authentication system with Laravel UI for Laravel Frontend Scaffolding.

Let's see step by step, how we can do that.

Install Packages

Install Laravel Fortify and Laravel UI AdminLTE by the following command,

composer require laravel/fortify infyomlabs/laravel-ui-adminlte

Publish Fortify Resources

This command will publish all required actions in the app/Actions directory along with the Fortify configuration file and migration for two-factor authentication.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Laravel\Fortify\FortifyServiceProvider"

Run Migrations

Then run migrations,

php artisan migrate

Add Fortify Service Provider

Next step, add published FortifyServiceProvider to config/app.php

Run AdminLTE Fortify Command

Run the following command,

php artisan ui adminlte-fortify --auth

Install Node Modules and Run a Build

As a next step, install required npm modules and run a build,

npm install && npm run dev

And we are done. Now visit the home page and you should be able to see the full authentication system working including,

Login Registration Forgot Password Reset Password Home page

Laravel AdminLTE UI also provides a starting layout with a sidebar menu and header once you login. so you are all set to go.

Recently in one of our client's projects, we want to load the count of relation in laravel. But we do not want to retrieve original records.

For example,

We have the following Models,

1. Category
2. Products
3. Orders

For that, we have categories, products, orders, order_items table. Where in the order_items table, we got the following fields

• order_id
• product_id
• quantity

So the requirement was, In the Products table, we want to display the total number of orders placed with that item regardless of the quantity in each order. All we need is a number of orders where the product is purchased.

1st way: Query via Relationship

$products = Product::all(); 
$productsArr = $products->map(function (Product $product) 
{     
     $productObj = $product->toArray();     
     $productObj['orders_count'] = $product->orders()->count();     
     return $productObj; 
   }
);

But the problem with this approach was, we are firing queries to the database for every single product. so if I'm retrieving 100 Products from the database then it will fire 100 additional queries to the database. Imagine if we have thousands of products.

2nd way: Eager Load Relationship and Calculate Count

$products = Product::with('orders')->get(); 
$productsArr = $products->map(function (Product $product) 
{
     $productObj = $product->toArray();
     $productObj['orders_count'] = $product->orders->count();
     return $productObj; 
   }
);

so this way, we are only firing two queries to the database. But the problem here is, we are loading all the Orders of each product which we don't need at all. so it will consume lots of memory since we are loading lots of orders. so imaging if we retrieve 100 products, and each product has 10 orders, then we are loading 1000 Orders into memory without any need.

3rd way: Use withCount function

The third powerful approach of using withCount function in Laravel. so we refactored our code like,

$products = Product::withCount('orders')->get();
$productsArr = $products->map(function (Product $product) 
{     
    $productObj = $product->toArray();
    $productObj['orders_count'] = $product ->getAttribute('orders_count');     
    return $productObj; 
    }
);

In this approach, we are firing two queries but no Order models are loaded into memory.

4th Bonus: Using in a nested relationship while multiple eager loading

You can even use it with nested relationships. Imagine a case, where you want to retrieve categories along with its products with orders count.

    $categories = Category::with(['products' => function ($query)
    {
        $query->withCount('orders');
    },
        'someOtherEagerLoading1',
        'someOtherEagerLoading2'
    ])->get();
    $categoriesArr = $categories->map(function (Category $category)
    {
        $categoryObj = $category->toArray();
        $categoryObj['products'] = $category->products->map(function (Product $product)
        {
            $productObj = $product->toArray();
            $productObj['orders_count'] = $product ->getAttribute('orders_count');
            return $productObj;
        });
        return $categoryObj;
    });

Hope this will help you to retrieve the count of relationship data without retrieving actual relation data.

Lots of people ask me frequently, "Which are the laravel packages that you use in almost all projects?" when we meet in Meetup or any other events regardless of its online or physical events.

Let me describe today some of the packages that we almost use in all of the projects.

We have been working in Laravel for almost 7+ years and in these years we have used lots of packages, some from the community and some of our own.

I am categorizing these into 2 categories.

1. Most used packages
2. Common Need/Functionality specific packages

Most used packages

These are the packages which must be included in all of our projects. No Excuses.

barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper

Laravel exposes a lot of magic methods and properties. IDE Helper is a very good package when it comes to auto-complete those properties and methods. Even it does an amazing job while refactoring properties or methods of the model.

barryvdh/laravel-debugbar

The second one is from the same author, debugbar helps to debug the request in terms of the number of queries fired, time taken by each query, number models retrieved from db, time taken by each request, and much more.

imanghafoori/laravel-microscope

Laravel Microscope improves the readability of your code. Early returns, unnecessary else statements, and many more. so your code looks clean and efficient in terms of execution as well.

beyondcode/laravel-query-detector

One of the problems that we face is, missing eager loading. In ongoing development, sometimes we add relationships objects in the loops, and then laravel fires tons of queries to the database. Laravel Query Detector detects that and gives a warning while developing the environment.

InfyOmLabs/laravel-generator

No application can be ever built without a few CRUDs. CRUDs are essential in almost all web applications. Also, APIs of CRUDs are essential while building a backend for Mobile or Frontend apps. Laravel Generator is our own developed package that we use in all of the applications to make the CRUD building process faster. It can be used with two themes right now, AdminLTE and CoreUI. But it's also frontend framework agnostic.

Common Need/Functionality specific packages

These are the packages that are used when we particularly need that kind of functionality in the application.

• Single Page application without JS - Livewire
• Role Permissions - spatie/laravel-permission
• Media Management - spatie/laravel-medialibrary
• Full Text Search - Laravel Scout
• Payment - Laravel Cashier
• Frontend Scaffolding - Laravel UI AdminLTE & Laravel UI CoreUI
• APIs token management - Laravel Sanctum
• Realtime Apps - Laravel Echo with Pusher & Laravel Echo Server
• One Signal - Shailesh OneSignal

Will keep this list updating.

Recently, we were working on a laravel app where we have a status column in multiple models. We have multiple processes going on for which we have different jobs.

Initially job status will be "Pending", then each job will take one record, change the status to "Running" and process that record, and update the status to either "Completed" or "Failed".

We have constants for each status. Something like below,

static $STATUS_PENDING = 0; 
static $STATUS_RUNNING = 1; 
static $STATUS_COMPLETED = 2; 
static $STATUS_FAILED = 3;

And the problem is, we need to go and define the status in every model that we have (around 10+ models).

Then we have functions to update status and check the status in each model like,

public function markRunning($saveRecord = true) 
{     
    $this->status = static::$STATUS_RUNNING;
    if ($saveRecord) {
        $this->save();
    }
}

public function isRunning()
{
    return $this->status === static::$STATUS_RUNNING;
}

And above functions existed for each 4 status. So what we did is, we created a common StatusTrait which can be used across multiple models.

Here is the code of StatusTrait that you can find for that.

Then in each model, we use this trait. For e.g.,

class SavePdf extends Model 
{     
    use StatusTrait;
    .....
}

And then can use any method of trait in all the models,

... 
$savePdf = new SavePdf(); 
$savePdf->markRunning(); 
...

Or we can check if the status of the model is running or not. For e.g.,

... 
if ($savePdf->isRunning()) 
{     
    // logic here 
} 
...

This is how we have saved tons of writing code and optimized the code. Another advantage is, we can just update the value of any status from one single place.

You can also check this kind of pattern and do something like this.

Laravel Debugbar is a great package to debug Laravel applications while developing. But it's not just limited to debugging. You can use it to optimize the performance of your app a lot as well. Like,

• number of models loaded in a memory
• number of queries fired with timing
• memory used and more.

In short, we can have a complete view of what's going on in each request.

But the less known and used feature it gives is the Timeline tab. Where you can see how much time is taken for each request. And more than that, how much time Laravel took to boot up and how much time our other code has taken. Check the below screenshot.

Recently we came to the case, where one of our consultation clients' CRM application was taking too much time on the first load. Their developers were not able to spot a problem. They checked queries and other stuff which looked completely good. so we were not sure where the time had been spent by the application.

That's where debugbar came to rescue us. We used its measure function facility by which we can measure the time spent in each of the functions wherever we want to use. It gives simply two functions startMeasure and stopMeasure to measure the time spent between these two statements.

so we can put startMeasure in the starting of function and put stopMeasure at the end of the function which will render something like this in the timeline tab.

public function searchClients($department) 
{     
    \Debugbar::startMeasure("searchClients'');
    // logic here

    \Debugbar::stopMeasure("searchClients");

    return $result;
}

Once we put this, we get a time that < code > searchClients is taking. Check the screenshot below,

Hope this can help you to figure out what piece of code is taking the time and you can optimize it.

Happy Optimizing :)