mercuryseries/laravel-helpers

Dynamic Method Helpers

Dynamic Method Helpers

Before using Laravel I was a big fan of Ruby on Rails and the feature that I loved the most about Ruby on Rails was the ability to create a helper method (in a module) and being able to call it like a global method., _(*1)

Module BooksHelper
  def format_price(book)
    if book.free?
      content_tag(:strong, 'Free!')
    else
      number_to_currency(book.price)
    end
   end
end

<p><%= format_price(book) %></p>

Pretty cool isn't it?, _(*2)

Now as you might guess I want to have the same thing in Laravel., _(*3)

Oh I should have said I have the same thing now with Laravel :), _(*4)

Disclaimer: Of course you can create a folder with many files helpers or just one global file helper and autoload it with Composer but I rather prefer to create a class and it's much more clear when testing. So everyone may not like it!, _(*5)

Here are the steps if you also want it:, _(*6)

Install the package through Composer

composer require mercuryseries/laravel-helpers

Register the package service provider in config/app.php by adding:

MercurySeries\Helpers\HelpersServiceProvider::class,

Create a Helpers directory in your app folder.

Now you can create a Helpers directory in your app folder., _(*7)

Add some classes with your helper methods

PS: All helper methods need to be static., _(*8)

<?php

// File: app/Helpers/BooksHelper.php

namespace App\Helpers;

use App\Book;

class BooksHelper
{
    public static function formatPrice(Book $book)
    {
        if($book->isFree()) {
            return '<strong>Free!</strong>';
        } else {
            return sprintf('$%f', number_format($book->price, 2, '.', ''));
        }
    }
}

<?php

// File: app/Helpers/PagesHelper.php

namespace App\Helpers;

class PagesHelper
{
    public static function setActive($route)
    {
        // your code goes here
    }
}

Have fun now as me by using your helper methods

{{ $formatPrice($book) }}
{{ $setActive('home') }}

You can also call it with:, _(*9)

{{ App\Helpers\BooksHelper::formatPrice($book) }}

Don't forget to change App accordingly to your application's root namespace. But that is exactly what I want to avoid (that long stuff)., _(*10)

More Configuration?

The Helpers folder name and the namespace App\Helpers can be easily changed via the configuration file. Just publish it and edit it as you want:, _(*11)

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="MercurySeries\Helpers\HelpersServiceProvider"

Cheers!, _(*12)