Creating A Master Layout

Let’s streamline our app’s structure even further! In this video, we tackle layout repetition by introducing a master layout—making our pages cleaner and more consistent. 🧼

Here’s what we’ll cover:
• Refactor repetitive layout code into layout/app.view.php using a $page_content placeholder for dynamic content 🧩
• Enhance our view() helper function to accept a third $layout parameter 🧠
• Update controllers to support a page_layout variable for flexibility in rendering 🛠️
• Clean up our individual page views for clarity and focus ✂️
• Bonus: Improve our dd() helper to accept any number of arguments using ...$var 🧪

By the end of this refactor, we’ll be rocking version v8-create-layout—a polished, DRY, and maintainable foundation for future growth. 🚀

Creating Views

Let’s clean up our code and separate logic from markup—the pragmatic way! In this video, we refactor each page to use dedicated view files, making our structure more scalable and maintainable. 🧼📁

Here’s what we’ll do:
• Move HTML into organized view files:
• views/about/index.view.php 🧾
• views/photo/index.view.php 📷
• views/upload/index.view.php ⬆️
• Create a global view() helper function to simplify view rendering across the app 🛠️

This separation of concerns brings clarity to our project and lays the groundwork for a clean MVC structure. By the end, we’ll be rocking version v5-created-views—structured, readable, and ready for action! 🚀

Creating, Removing, & Cloning Elements

Web pages don’t have to be static — with JavaScript, you can build, destroy, and duplicate elements on the fly. In this video, we’ll dive into the core DOM methods that let you take full control over your UI.

Here’s what you’ll master:
🧩 Creating nodes with createElement & createTextNode
📌 Inserting elements using append, appendChild, and prepend
🗑️ Removing nodes gracefully with .remove() and .removeChild()
🪞 Cloning entire elements with cloneNode(true/false)
⚡ Building dynamic UI components—like interactive tables, buttons, and more

You’ll see:
✅ Why innerHTML isn’t always your best friend
✅ How to dynamically add “Remove” and “Clone” buttons to a table
✅ A hands-on demo where rows can be added, deleted, or duplicated — all with clean JavaScript

By the end, you won’t just be reading the DOM — you’ll be shaping it, sculpting it, and breathing life into it 💡🚀

👉 Watch this video and unlock the power to create and control dynamic UIs!

Custom Alerts / Toasts

n this video, we take a practical, hands-on look at Alerts / Toast Messages and how they fit into Laravel’s session-driven workflow.

You’ll learn:
✨ What alerts/toasts are and why real applications rely on them
✨ How to build a clean, reusable alert component on the front end
✨ How to create a smooth developer experience on the back end
✨ How to connect both pieces using Laravel’s session flash data
✨ How to display success, warning, and error messages seamlessly

We walk through the full flow—from triggering messages in your controllers to rendering beautiful toast-style alerts in your UI. This is a foundational building block for providing meaningful feedback to your users.

By the end of the video, you’ll have a custom-built alert system that works across your entire application and follows Laravel’s best practices.

#Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #FullStackDev #BackendDevelopment #CodingTutorial #TekCasts

Custom Middleware

In this video, we explore how to create and use custom middleware in Laravel—one of the most powerful tools for intercepting and transforming HTTP requests and responses.

You'll learn how middleware works behind the scenes, how to build your own, and how to apply it to your routes using both class names and aliases. We walk through several practical examples that demonstrate how middleware can redirect users, modify incoming request data, and even alter outgoing HTML responses.

What We Cover
- Generating custom middleware with Artisan
- Understanding the handle() method lifecycle
- Adding logic before and after the request reaches your controller
- Building a middleware that performs redirects
- Creating route aliases for cleaner middleware usage
- Modifying incoming request data (e.g., normalizing phone numbers)
- Injecting additional content into outgoing HTML responses
- Managing configuration-driven UI banners
- Tagging and pushing source code for versioning

This video provides a solid foundation for writing expressive, maintainable middleware tailored to your application's needs.

#Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #Coding #Developers #Programming #FullStack #TekCasts

Data Types

Understanding data types is essential for writing efficient and error-free PHP code! In this video, we’ll break down PHP’s core data types, including strings, integers, floats, and booleans, and show you how they work in real-world applications. You’ll learn how to:

✅ Properly name and assign variables
✅ Work with strings, including concatenation and the differences between single and double quotes
✅ Perform simple math with integers and floats, while exploring PHP’s type juggling
✅ Understand booleans and how PHP dynamically handles truthy and falsy values

By the end of this video, you’ll have a solid grasp of PHP’s data types and be ready to start building dynamic applications with confidence! 🚀

Database Connections / Migrations

Let’s connect our app to the real world of data! In this video, we build a reliable and secure database layer and run our first migrations and seed scripts. This step sets the stage for persistent data handling in our application. 🧱

Here’s what we cover:
• Temporarily hijack index.php for local development and testing purposes 🔧
• Add database/migrate.sql and database/seed.sql to define and populate our schema 🧬
• Use file_get_contents() to load SQL scripts and run them using PDO 🎯
• Define connection settings: host, port, database name, user, and password (with Docker-friendly defaults) 🐳
• Set up secure PDO options for error handling and safe queries 🔐
• Wrap everything in a try/catch to safely execute migrations and seeding 🚨
• Introduce our app’s database structure:
• users – for login info 👤
• photos – uploaded images 📸
• reviews – ratings and comments ⭐📝
• Protect sensitive credentials by moving them into a .env file 🛡️
• Create a Framework/Env.php class to access environment variables cleanly 🌱

By the end of this video, version v11-db-basics will bring real data into play—securely, cleanly, and pragmatically. 🚀

Database Infrastructure

Let’s encapsulate our database logic the pragmatic way! In this video, we refactor our raw database code into a dedicated Database class, making connections and queries more reusable, readable, and testable. 🛠️

Here’s what we’ll do:


Create a Framework/Database class that accepts config parameters in the constructor ⚙️
Expose an exec() method for executing raw SQL 🧾
Add a static instance for quick access to a shared connection 🌐
Introduce helper methods: first() to fetch a single record & all() to fetch multiple records
Write a simple query to fetch a photo by ID and pass it into the view dynamically 📸
Update the View class to properly render passed variables inside templates
Introduce a private render_template() method to handle this cleanly 🧩


By the end of this refactor, we’ll be on version v12-db-encapsulation—with database access that’s clean, powerful, and built to scale. 🚀

Database Migrations

In this episode, we introduce one of Laravel’s most powerful features: database migrations. You’ll learn how migrations act like version control for your database, making schema changes reliable, reversible, and easy to manage across development and production environments.

💡 What You’ll Learn
- How Laravel’s database abstraction layer simplifies working with different databases
- Designing a database schema for the Survey App (surveys, sections, and questions)
- Creating and running migrations with php artisan make:migration and php artisan migrate
- Rolling back and modifying migrations safely
- Configuring your database connection in Laravel
- Verifying your schema and data in your local environment

🧠 By the end of this video, you’ll have a working database structure ready for your Eloquent models — a major milestone toward a fully dynamic survey application.

🔗 Resources
- Laravel Database Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/database
- Laravel Migrations: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/migrations

#Laravel #PHP #TekCasts #WebDevelopment #DatabaseMigrations #FullStack #LaravelTips #SoftwareEngineering #PHPDevelopers

Database Model Abstractions

In this video, we take a big step toward cleaner, more maintainable code by introducing a Model abstraction layer—a pattern that reduces boilerplate and centralizes logic around database operations. This lands in version v20-db-models.

Here’s what gets done:

✅ Create a Models/Photo class
- Move the all() and find() logic out of PhotoController and into this model

✅ Create a Models/Review class
- Same deal: centralize data logic away from controllers
- Introduce a protected static ?string $table property

🧱 Extract shared logic into a Framework/Model base class:
- static table() throws by default—models must define their own table
- Implement reusable all() and find() methods

🔄 Refactor all() and find() with:
- static::query() → creates an instance of the model
- get() → used by all(), calls build_query() to prepare the SQL and params
- build_query() → generates the SQL from query state

🧠 Reimagine find() usage like this:
- static::query()->where('id', '=', $id)->first();
- Then implement:
- A where() method that collects conditions into $wheres
- Modify build_query() to handle WHERE clauses
- A first() method to return the first matching result

🚀 Refactor the PhotoController to use the new model APIs
- Add an insert() method on the base Model class for creating new records


By the end of this refactor, your models are smart, reusable, and expressive—freeing your controllers from repetitive SQL and focusing them on application logic. Pragmatic PHP is feeling pretty elegant right about now. 👌

Database Seeding

In this episode, we build on our migrations work and dive into Laravel Database Seeding — a powerful feature that helps you automatically populate your database with meaningful test data.
Seeding ensures your app always starts with realistic content, perfect for development, testing, and demos.

🔍 In this video, you’ll learn how to:
- Create and register database seeders
- Populate surveys, sections, and questions automatically
- Use php artisan migrate:fresh --seed for quick resets
- Generate consistent, realistic data for development
- Display seeded survey data dynamically in your app

💡 This is a crucial step before introducing Eloquent models — connecting your database to application logic.

🧠 Key Commands
- php artisan make:seeder SurveySeeder
- php artisan db:seed
- php artisan db:seed --class=SurveySeeder
- php artisan migrate:fresh --seed
- php artisan migrate:fresh --seed --seeder=SurveySeeder

🔗 Resources
- Laravel Seeding Documentation: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/seeding
- GitHub Repository: https://github.com/rcravens/laravel_survey_app

#Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #LaravelTutorial #FullStack #TekCasts #CodeBetter #DevTips #LaravelForDevelopers

Defining and Calling Functions

In this episode, you’ll unlock the power of functions — reusable blocks of code that let you organize your logic, avoid repetition, and keep your programs clean and efficient. 🧼✨

🎯 Here’s what we’ll cover:
• What a function really is and why it’s a cornerstone of any serious JavaScript developer’s toolkit.
• The difference between function declarations and function expressions, and when to use each.
• A first look at sleek, modern arrow functions introduced in ES6 — cleaner syntax with powerful flexibility.

🎥 Visual Walkthroughs:
• See each style written and called step-by-step.
• Watch how functions help break your code into logical pieces.
• Reinforce learning through quick, practical examples you can follow along with.

By the end, you’ll have multiple tools to define and invoke your own functions — and you’ll know which style fits your coding vibe best! 🧑‍💻🚀

Deployment Basics

Your Node.js journey is about to go live 🌐🚀

You’ve built, refactored, and refined — now it’s time to deploy your application to the real world!
In this episode, we’ll walk through the key steps and best practices for running your Node.js app in production.

👉 In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

⚙️ Configure your app for different environments
📊 Manage logs and monitor performance
🧱 Handle errors gracefully in production
🌱 Use environment variables for configuration
🌀 Keep your app running with process managers like PM2

By the end, you’ll understand what it takes to make your Node.js app not just work — but thrive in production 💪

💡 Relevant Links

Previous TekCasts series:
- JavaScript for Beginners: https://tekcasts.com/play/javascript-for-beginners-what-is-javascript
- JavaScript in the Browser: https://tekcasts.com/play/javascript-in-the-browser-browser-runtime-environment

Libraries & Tools mentioned:
- PM2 Process Manager: https://pm2.keymetrics.io/
- Node.js Documentation: https://nodejs.org/en/docs/
- dotenv: https://www.npmjs.com/package/dotenv

Destructuring & Spread Syntax

Tired of writing extra lines just to pull out values or merge data? In this episode, you’ll learn two super-handy JavaScript features — destructuring and spread syntax — that make your code cleaner, shorter, and easier to read.

🎯 What you’ll learn:

Array destructuring — extract values directly into variables, skip items, and set default values.
Object destructuring — grab properties by name, rename them, and give them defaults.
Spread syntax — copy, merge, and expand arrays or objects with ease, plus collect the “rest” of the values.


💡 Why it matters:
These techniques are used constantly in modern JavaScript — especially in frameworks like React — so mastering them now will make your future projects smoother and more efficient.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be able to take apart and recombine data like a pro. 🚀

Development Environment

Before diving into PHP, we need to set up a solid development environment—the pragmatic way. ⚙️

In this video, we’ll walk through cloning the starter HTML version of our app, laying the groundwork for everything we’ll build together. This version is clean, organized, and perfect for transitioning into dynamic PHP. 🧱

We’ll also introduce the application starter kit that powers this series:
🔗 https://github.com/rcravens/kit
This kit streamlines development with useful tools and structure that we’ll build on throughout the project.

Our project lives here:
🔗 https://github.com/rcravens/rate_this_pic.git
Be sure to check out the v1-static-html tag to follow along with this video.

Let’s get your environment ready so you can build with confidence! 🚀

Displaying Reviews

Let’s bring feedback into the spotlight! In this video, we enhance the photo detail page by fetching and displaying user reviews from the database. 💬

Here’s what we’ll cover:


Query the database for all reviews associated with a given photo 📄
Loop through the reviews and display them on the photo page 🎞️
Calculate a summary (like average stars or total reviews) 📊
Display the summary alongside the photo for quick insight 🧠


By the end, version v15-show-reviews adds real voices to each photo—making the app feel more alive and interactive. 🚀