Unfolding The Key Features And Updates of The Latest Version of Laravel 9!

The immense popularity, requirements, and usage of web application have led the organization to adapt to various frameworks that match modern needs.

Out of many, Laravel has emerged as the top choice for many PHP development firms due to its various tools, libraries, packages, and extension offerings.

As a result, the Laravel development team and community have been tirelessly working on improvements and updates to make it more adaptable for developers. It recently got its latest version, Laravel 9, in February 2022.

In this blog, let’s jump into the R&D segments and find out what changes and updates have been made in the latest version of Laravel.

So, to begin with:

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a free, open-source PHP framework with a highly scalable, elegant syntax used to create dynamic web applications.

This framework follows the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern and Symphony, allowing developers to learn, build and execute from its complete web development ecosystem.

Laravel usage has peaked in the last couple of years as many start-ups and enterprises started adopting this framework for developing robust PHP-based applications.

Due to PHP’s top-notch security enhancement, it got much-deserved appreciation from the developer community worldwide.

Essential Features of Laravel

Laravel’s features keep jumping to the upper version with every release. But, some vital features were in-built and only received minimal upgrades.

Let’s summarize the essential features of Laravel:

Artisan CLI 

The Artisan CLI, popularly known as the command line, plays a vital role in creating and modifying any part of Laravel from the command line without navigation through any folder or files.

Moreover, Artisan CLI helps in making direct interactions with your database with a single command line through Laravel Thinker.

Eloquent ORM 

The short form ORM stands for Object Relational Mapper (ORM), also known/called Eloquent, and allows seamless interaction with the database and data model of any choice.

With Eloquent, Laravel resolves every obstacle of SQL queries allowing you o access data from your database.

MVC Architecture

You can’t learn or proceed with Laravel without having a solid grip on its MVC architecture. The MVC architecture follows an extensive web development pattern with ongoing, vital improvements.

The MVC Architectural Pattern is widely popular amongst other languages, such as AdonisJS from JavaScript and ASP.NET MVC from C#.

Automatic Pagination

In Laravel, you won’t have to deal with the application pagination issue as it has in-built automatic pagination. Here, it organizes more subtly, minimizing the pagination issue-solving process in the best possible order.

Security

Irrespective of its popularity and usage, every framework’s value and adaptability highly depend on its security features.

On a good note, Laravel does offer high-end security measures due to its adherence to OWASP security principles. You will find a pre-built solution for all, from cross-site request forgery (CSRF) to SQL injection.

What’s new in Laravel 9?

At first, Laravel was scheduled to be released on September 21. Later it was pushed for January 2022 release, but due to some last-minute changes, it got a final release month, February 2022.

Usually, it never takes this much time as most of the previous Laravel versions git promoted every six months. According to the team, the delay in releasing the latest version of Laravel is due to the following factors:

• The incorporation of the new version of Symphony in Laravel 9! Earlier, Laravel used several community-driven projects and nine Symphonies.
• Due to the delay, the Laravel team has now had some opportunity to observe how Symphony is performing in Laravel 9 and make changes in the Symphony if required.

Newly Added Features in Laravel 9

Now, let’s explore the new feature addition of Laravel 9 in brief.

Minimal PHP Requirements

Before jumping straight into the latest version of Laravel 9, you must obtain PHP 8 and PHP Unit 8 for manual testing.

The reason behind this is simple, Laravel 9 will be using the updated Symphony v6.0, which also requires the support of PHP 8.

Stub Migration

Upon running the popular migration command (PHP artisan make: migration), Laravel turns the anonymous stub migration into default behavior.

The anonymous stub migration was first released in Laravel 8.37 to bring the Github solution. Earlier, multiple migrations with a similar class name were used to problems during database recreation from scratch.

After implementing Laravel 8.37, the new stub migration feature seamlessly eliminates migration class name collisions.

As a result, The framework now supports anonymous class migration files. In Laravel 9, it will stay as the default behavior.

Latest Query Builder Interface

In Laravel 9, the type hinting, refactoring, static analysis, and code completion in their IDEs have become more reliable than earlier. Also, developers can now enjoy a new query builder for the same.

In this latest version, you will find the IlluminateContractsDatabaseQueryBuilder interface and IlluminateDatabaseEloquentConcernsDecoratesQueryBuilder trait, implement the interface replacing __call magic method.

PHP 8 String Functions

As Laravel 9 primary target is PHP 8, it has merged with this PR using the latest PHP 8 string functions:

These strig functions includes: str_contains(), str_starts_with(), and str_ends_with() internally in the IlluminateSupportStr class.

So these are some of the notable and essential features included in the Laravel 9 that you should be aware of before installing.

Laravel 9 Installation Process!

The Laravel 9 installation process is easy, and you can quickly install and run it on your local machine.

For your information:

PHP 8 is well compatible with Laravel 9. So if you are planning for testing, make sure to run a thorough check of your PHP version first.

Now, follow the stepwise installation process:

Step 1 – Create a Laravel project using the following command

composer create-project –prefer-dist laravel/laravel laravel-9-dev test-laravel9

Upon entering the command, you can create a new Laravel project named laravel-9-dev.

Step 2 – If you have a Laravel installer, enter the below command

laravel new laravel-9-dev test-laravel9

Step 3 – After installing Laravel 9, enter the below command to check the Laravel version

cd dev-laravel9

PHP artisan –version

That’s it! You have successfully installed Laravel 9 in your directory.

Final Thoughts!

So, this completes our final summarization of Laravel 9 features updates. The team has done the changes and updates. Now, it’s up to the users to test & validate those upgrades’ worthiness.

Meanwhile, you can hire Laravel developers from Metizsoft Solutions to get complete guidance on the Laravel 9 installation and project initialization at a monthly, weekly, and yearly rate.

You can share your knowledge, thoughts, and queries in the comment section below at your convenience.