Laravel: Code Smart is the third installment in my 'Code' series of books for the Laravel framework. The 'Code' books have thousands of readers and are considered by many to be the most effective method of learning the Laravel framework. As always, my books serve as both an introduction for beginners, and reference material for more experienced developers. I promise that you're going to love it! You'll be writing Laravel applications in no time.

Features

Code Smart is the true evolution of the 'Code' series. Here are some of the new features.

• Full support for Laravel 5.
• Revamped code examples, with improved highlighting.
• Existing content from Code Bright is refreshed for the new generation of Laravel.
• Code samples now adhere to the PSR-2 coding standard, and use modern PHP features.
• Spelling and grammar have improved tenfold!
• Entirely new introductory and installation chapters. It's now much easier to get started.
• Get started using 'Homestead' to be up and running with Laravel in no time at all.
• A bunch of extra hints and tips scattered throughout the chapters.
• Free beer.

Launch Content

Code Smart will launch with existing Code Bright content revamped, new Laravel 5 chapters, and almost 400 pages. Then it will grow on a weekly basis to become the biggest and greatest resource for learning the Laravel framework. I'm committed to writing at least one new chapter a week. You can vote for the new chapters, by tweeting with the hashtag #codesmart.

Direct Contact

If you find any topic confusing, would like something explained in a different way, or would like something added to the book, simply email me! We'll work together to make Code Smart the number one book for the Laravel framework.

Oh. By the way. Did I mention that there are pandas? There are loads of pandas! Buy it now!

Seriously, though. If you decide to buy Code Smart, then you'll be supporting my future career as a technical author. Thanks to each and every one of you.

API development is becoming increasingly common for server-side developers thanks to the rise of front-end JavaScript frameworks, iPhone applications, and API-centric architectures. It might seem like grabbing stuff from a data source and shoving it out as JSON would be easy, but surviving changes in business logic, database schema updates, new features, or deprecated endpoints can be a nightmare.

After finding many of the existing resources for API development to be lacking, Phil learned a lot of things the hard way through years of trial and error. This book aims to condense that experience, taking examples and explanations further than the trivial apples and pears nonsense tutorials often provide.

Phil worked primarily as an API developer for the last three years. One horror was managing an API built in FuelPHP by a freelancer at the million dollar startup he joined. It was utilizing a then deprecated ORM which had been hacked to death by the previous developer, so took the time to delete that mess and build the next version in Laravel, leveraging it's simple routing, database migrations, schema, seeding, etc. When the following major version of the API was built no rewrite was required, and both managed to live side-by-side on the same "API" servers.

By passing on some best practices and general good advice you can hit the ground running with API development, combined with some horror stories and how they were overcome/avoided/averted. This book will discuss the theory of designing and building APIs in any language or framework, with this theory applied in PHP-based examples.

Some of the more advanced topics covered here are endpoint testing, embedding data objects in a consistent and scalable manner, paginating responses (including embedded objects) and hypermedia "HATEOAS" controls.