Pragmatic Laravel

Introduction

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		1	Survey App Mockup Review Welcome to the Laravel Survey App series — where we’ll transform a static HTML survey page into a powerful, data-driven Laravel application! 🚀 In this first episode, we’ll review the project mockup, explore the data model, and outline the core features that will shape the app. You’ll get a clear vision for what we’re building — from admin dashboards and dynamic surveys to real-time results and data visualization. 🔍 In this video, we’ll cover: Reviewing the static HTML survey design Discussing the data model (surveys, sections, questions, responses) Defining the key app features for admins and users Linking to the GitHub repo for source code access Tagging the initial version: git tag video_01 🧠 What You’ll Learn You’ll see how to think like a Laravel developer from the start — modeling data relationships, planning for dynamic rendering, and setting up a roadmap for a real-world web app. 🛠️ Resources 🔗 Laravel Home Page → https://laravel.com/ 💻 GitHub Repo → https://github.com/rcravens/laravel_survey_app 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. 📺 Up Next Next episode: Getting Started with Laravel — we’ll install Laravel and bring in our static HTML mockup to kick off the build!	Tue, Nov 11, 2025	12m:18s
		2	Larvel Installation Let’s get Laravel up and running! 🚀 In this video, we’ll install Laravel, set up our development environment, and bring in the static HTML mockup we created earlier. You’ll see how to quickly spin up a new Laravel app, configure your routes, and render your first Blade view — laying the foundation for everything that follows in our Laravel Survey App series. 🔍 In this video, we’ll cover: - Installing Laravel via the command line - Setting up the Laravel installer and Composer - Creating a /survey route and Blade view - Copying our static survey design into Laravel 🧠 What You’ll Learn You’ll learn how to create a clean Laravel setup from scratch — understanding the directory structure, the power of Blade templates, and how routing connects everything together. 🛠️ Resources 📘 Laravel Install Guide → https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/installation 💻 GitHub Repo → https://github.com/rcravens/laravel_survey_app 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. 📺 Up Next Next episode: Blade Templates — we’ll refactor our HTML into reusable layouts, partials, and components to make our app cleaner and easier to maintain.	Tue, Nov 11, 2025	13m:32s

Views, Layouts & Components

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		3	Blade Templates, Partials, & Layouts In this episode, we introduce Blade, Laravel’s powerful templating engine. You’ll learn how Blade compiles templates, uses partials and layouts, and organizes your view structure for clean, maintainable code. 🧩 What You’ll Learn - How Blade templates work under the hood - Using partials to eliminate repetitive code - Setting up layouts with @yield and @section - Managing shared scripts with @stack and @push - Preparing for reusable Blade components 🔗 Related Resources - Laravel Blade Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/blade - Laravel Views Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/views - Previous Video: Laravel Installation → https://tekcasts.com/play/laravel-the-pragmatic-way-larvel-installation 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic.	Tue, Nov 11, 2025	19m:43s
		4	Blade Components In this episode, we take Blade templating to the next level by introducing Blade Components — Laravel’s elegant way to build reusable UI elements. You’ll learn how to structure your views into flexible, maintainable pieces that encapsulate both presentation and logic. 🧩 What You’ll Learn - What Blade components are and why they matter - The difference between Class-Based and Anonymous components - How to pass data and props to components - How to use slots for flexible, nested layouts - Refactoring survey question elements into Blade components 🔗 Related Resources - Laravel Blade Components Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/blade#components - Laravel Anonymous Components Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/blade#anonymous-components Previous Video: Blade Templates — Layouts & Partials → https://tekcasts.com/play/laravel-the-pragmatic-way-blade-templates-partials-layouts 📺 Up Next: Question Data Model — we’ll design the database layer to define and manage survey questions dynamically. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic.	Tue, Nov 11, 2025	20m:24s
		5	Question Data Model In this episode, we shift from static components to data-driven questions by introducing a simple Question Data Model. This prepares our Survey App to dynamically render questions based on data — not hard-coded markup. 💡 What You’ll Learn - How to represent survey questions as PHP objects - Passing structured question data into Blade components - Using props to render reusable question types - Handling dynamic attributes like placeholders, required flags, and default answers - Setting up for conditional logic and future dynamic surveys 🧠 You’ll see how clean data structures unlock flexibility in your Blade components — a key step toward building a fully dynamic survey system. 📺 Up Next: Survey Data Model — where we combine question data into full survey definitions and begin organizing sections for more complex forms. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #TekCasts #Blade #Eloquent #FullStack #SoftwareEngineering #LaravelDevelopers #CleanCode #ComponentDrivenDevelopment	Tue, Nov 11, 2025	11m:17s
		6	Component Slots & Attributes In this episode, we take another major step toward a fully dynamic survey system by building out the Survey Data Model. With a clean structure for surveys, sections, and questions, we can now render entire surveys dynamically — no more hard-coded components! 💡 What You’ll Learn - Creating a Survey Data Model with sections and questions - Enhancing the Question Model with a type property - Leveraging Laravel’s to render components dynamically - Refactoring your survey.blade.php for flexibility and maintainability - Preparing the foundation for storing data in the database 🧠 This is where the Survey App becomes truly data-driven — paving the way for dynamic survey creation and admin-level editing in future episodes. 📺 Up Next: Databases — we’ll introduce migrations, Eloquent models, and link our survey data to persistent storage. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #TekCasts #WebDevelopment #CleanCode #Blade #FullStack #SoftwareEngineering	Thu, Nov 27, 2025	20m:47s

Database, Migrations & Eloquent

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		7	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 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #TekCasts #WebDevelopment #DatabaseMigrations #FullStack #LaravelTips #SoftwareEngineering #PHPDevelopers	Tue, Dec 2, 2025	29m:46s
		8	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 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #LaravelTutorial #FullStack #TekCasts #CodeBetter #DevTips #LaravelForDevelopers	Thu, Dec 4, 2025	19m:31s
		9	Eloquent ORM In this episode, we move from raw query building into Laravel’s Eloquent ORM — an elegant way to interact with your database using PHP objects instead of SQL queries. Eloquent simplifies data access, manages relationships automatically, and helps keep your code clean, readable, and expressive. 🔍 In this video, you’ll learn how to: - Create Eloquent models for your tables - Define relationships between surveys, sections, and questions - Replace complex Query Builder logic with elegant model relationships - Use eager loading with with() for efficient database queries - Leverage attribute casting for arrays and enums 💡 You’ll see how Eloquent turns your data model into a first-class part of your application — paving the way for true MVC architecture in upcoming episodes. 🧠 Key Commands - php artisan make:model Survey - php artisan make:model SurveySection - php artisan make:model SurveyQuestion 🔗 Resources - Eloquent ORM Documentation: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/eloquent - TekCasts – Database Model Abstractions: https://tekcasts.com/play/pragmatic-php-database-model-abstractions - TekCasts – GitHub Repo (Rate This Pic): https://github.com/rcravens/rate_this_pic/blob/master/app/Framework/Model.php 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #Eloquent #PHP #WebDevelopment #LaravelTutorial #FullStack #TekCasts #CodeBetter #DevTips #LaravelForDevelopers	Tue, Dec 9, 2025	23m:21s
		10	Model Factories We simplify the process of generating test data by introducing Model Factories. Model factories allow you to create models and their relationships using expressive, reusable definitions — perfect for seeding your database with realistic sample data. You’ll learn how to: ✅ Create and use model factories (php artisan make:factory) ✅ Generate models with fake data using make() and create() ✅ Build relationships with nested factories (has()) ✅ Replace manual seeder logic with elegant factory-based seeding By the end of this video, your database setup will be cleaner, faster, and ready for scalable testing and development. Resources - Laravel Factories Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/eloquent-factories 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #Eloquent #WebDevelopment #DatabaseSeeding #ModelFactories #LaravelTips #FullStack #TekCasts #LearnToCode	Thu, Dec 11, 2025	24m:13s

Routes, Controllers, Form Data

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		11	Routing Basics In this episode, we dive into Laravel’s routing system — the foundation of handling incoming requests and returning the right responses. You’ll learn how to: ✅ Define routes using closures or controllers ✅ Use route parameters, dependency injection, and model binding ✅ Explore HTTP verbs like GET, POST, PUT, and more ✅ Work with different response types — views, JSON, files, and downloads ✅ Understand how routing connects to your app setup in bootstrap/app.php We’ll also update our app to: - Create /s/{id} and /s/{survey} routes to demo parameters and DI - Add a hash column to the surveys table - Update model factories and re-seed data - Introduce route model binding with /s/{survey:hash} Laravel Routing Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/routing 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #Routing #Eloquent #WebDevelopment #ModelBinding #LaravelTips #FullStack #TekCasts #LearnToCode	Tue, Dec 16, 2025	24m:14s
		12	Controller Basics In this episode, we tie together Routes, Models, and Views by introducing the Controller — the final piece of Laravel’s MVC architecture. You’ll learn how to: ✅ Create controllers using php artisan make:controller ✅ Organize request-handling logic into clean, reusable classes ✅ Connect routes to controller methods (actions) ✅ Implement GET and POST routes for taking a survey ✅ Apply route model binding and request/response patterns We’ll also clean up a few loose ends before diving into survey submissions: - Add default error pages - Rename SurveyStatusType → SurveyStatus - Guard routes against non-active surveys - Add an index to hash in migrations - Demonstrate booted() and enum casting in the Survey model - Simplify the factory by removing hash logic Copy these commands to follow along: php artisan make:controller TakeSurveyController Example routes: - Route::get('/s/{survey:hash}', [TakeSurveyController::class, 'show'])->name('survey.show'); - Route::post('/s/{survey:hash}', [TakeSurveyController::class, 'store'])->name('survey.store'); 📘 Resources - Laravel Controllers Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/controllers - Laravel Routing Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/routing - Laravel Model Events Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/eloquent#events - Laravel Error Pages Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/errors#http-exceptions - Migration Modifications Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/migrations#modifying-columns 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #MVC #Controllers #Routing #Eloquent #TekCasts #LearnToCode	Thu, Dec 18, 2025	23m
		13	Form Data & HTTP Post Handlers In this episode, we begin capturing and storing survey data! We’ll design the database schema for responses and answers, build out models, and wire up the controller logic to handle incoming survey submissions. This continues our journey of transforming a static survey page into a dynamic Laravel application — step by step, the pragmatic way. 🧠 What You’ll Learn - Designing survey_responses and survey_response_answers tables - Creating migrations and Eloquent models - Defining relationships between surveys, responses, and answers - Updating POST routes to save incoming data - Setting up a foundation for validation and fingerprinting 🧩 Commands Used - php artisan make:migration create_survey_responses_table - php artisan make:model SurveyResponse 🧱 Database Schema survey_responses - id (PK) - survey_id (FK: surveys) - user_fingerprint - completed_at (nullable) - created_at / updated_at survey_response_answers - id (PK) - survey_response_id (FK: survey_responses) - survey_question_id (FK: survey_questions) - answer (json) - created_at / updated_at 🔗 Resources - Migrations Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/migrations - Eloquent Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/eloquent - Routing Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/routing 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #Eloquent #DatabaseDesign #Migrations #TekCasts #LearnLaravel #FullStackDevelopment #Controllers	Tue, Dec 23, 2025	14m:43s

Fingerprinting

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		14	Take Survey Fingerprinting In this episode of Laravel: The Pragmatic Way, we explore how to generate a unique “fingerprint” for survey participants using a combination of PHP and JavaScript signals. You’ll learn what fingerprinting is, why it matters, the ethical considerations, and how to integrate a JavaScript fingerprinting library into your Laravel workflow. 🧠 What You’ll Learn - A method of producing a unique identifier using user “signals.” - Why fingerprinting must be handled with caution — privacy, consent, regulation concerns. - Which data you can access server-side vs client-side. - Including adding routes, generating fingerprints, and pre-filling survey responses. 🪪 Example Signals - PHP Signals (server-side): IP address, User-Agent, Accept-Language, Accept headers, Referer header, Cookies - JavaScript Signals (client-side): Everything PHP offers plus installed fonts, plugins/extensions, platform info, screen resolution, OS, touch capabilities, GPU/audio/video data, and more. 🛠️ Survey Workflow Changes 1. Install the JS Fingerprinting Library: https://github.com/jackspirou/clientjs 2. Update the route /s/{survey:hash} - No longer shows questions directly - Generates the fingerprint - Provides a “Take Survey” link: /s/{survey:hash}/{fingerprint} 3. Create the route /s/{survey:hash}/{fingerprint} - Ensures a SurveyResponse record exists - Passes SurveyResponse + SurveyResponseAnswers to the view - Pre-fills previous answers automatically 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #Fingerprinting #Security #Controllers #Forms #JavaScript #FullStackDevelopment #TekCasts #LearnLaravel #Routes #SurveyApp	Thu, Dec 25, 2025	31m:43s
		15	Fingerprint Refactoring In this video, we tighten up our survey flow by performing several important refactors across models, routes, and controllers. These changes lay the groundwork for securely capturing survey responses and preventing duplicates. Topics Covered - Adding model relationships: Survey → responses, SurveyQuestion → answers - Introducing a fingerprint-based protection to avoid duplicate survey submissions - Updating database migrations to support hashed response identifiers - Creating a clean, structured route layout for: ✔️ Viewing a survey ✔️ Submitting a fingerprint ✔️ Viewing the survey questions ✔️ Submitting survey answers - Refactoring TakeSurveyController to support the new workflow 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #FullStack #LaravelTutorial #Programming #SurveyApp #TechEducation #LaravelDevelopers #BuildInPublic #TekCasts	Tue, Dec 30, 2025	18m:20s

Validation & Errors

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		16	Validation Rules Engine In this video, we introduce server-side validation to ensure incoming survey data is complete, well-formed, and secure. You’ll learn how Laravel’s validation layer works, how to define rules, and how to prepare your app to handle different question types with a rule engine. Topics Covered: 🔍 What validation is and why it matters 🌐 Client-side vs. server-side validation 🛡️ Laravel’s built-in validation features 🧩 Introducing rules for each survey question type ⚙️ Building a rule engine to encapsulate validation logic 📦 Aggregating validation rules for a full survey ✔️ Validating incoming user input 📚 Resources - Laravel Validation Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/validation 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #FullStack #Validation #DataIntegrity #Programming #SurveyApp #TekCasts	Thu, Jan 1, 2026	22m:47s
		17	Form Validation Requests In this episode, we refactor our validation logic by introducing Form Request Validation, a powerful Laravel feature that helps keep controllers clean, reusable, and scalable. This step builds on our existing Validation Rules Engine and moves the logic into a dedicated request class—perfect for more complex validation and authorization scenarios. ✨ What You’ll Learn - How Form Request Validation works in Laravel - Why moving validation into request classes improves maintainability - Creating a custom request with php artisan make:request - Transferring validation and authorization logic from controllers - Updating the survey flow to use the new request 🧠 Form Request Benefits: - Cleaner and smaller controllers - Reusable validation logic - Built-in support for authorization - Consistent structure across larger apps 🔗 Resources - Laravel Form Request Validation Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/validation#form-request-validation 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #Programming #CleanCode #FullStack #Validation #LaravelTips #TekCasts	Tue, Jan 6, 2026	9m:9s
		18	Validation Errors Welcome back to Laravel: The Pragmatic Way! In this episode, we build on our Form Request workflow and focus on how Laravel handles validation errors — and how you can present them cleanly in your UI. We walk through the full flow: triggering errors, displaying them, styling them, and customizing their messages. 🎯 What You’ll Learn - How Laravel automatically redirects back with validation errors - Displaying all errors at the top of the page - Field-specific error messages using Blade directives - Highlighting invalid fields for better UX - Creating custom error messages inside your Form Request - Updating question components to surface validation issues cleanly If you’re enjoying the series, hit 👍 Like, 🔔 Subscribe, and share with other Laravel devs! 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic.	Thu, Jan 8, 2026	18m:18s

Authentication

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		19	Navigation In this video, we enhance the user experience of our survey application by improving navigation flow and tightening up some important logic. You’ll see how to guide users more intuitively through the app while ensuring clean, secure, and predictable behavior. What We Cover - Fixed the query in take_store by adding a missing where survey_id filter - Added a welcome page that lists all active surveys - Prevent users from retaking a survey they’ve already completed - Updated the “thanks” page with a Redo Survey link - Stretch Goal: Introduced a simple top-level navigation menu to improve app-wide usability 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #FullStackDev #TekCasts #WebAppDesign	Tue, Jan 13, 2026	18m:47s
		20	Laravel Starter Kits & Fortify In this video, we take our survey app to the next level by introducing Authentication, discussing installation options, and laying the groundwork for protected views and user-based access. Along the way, we also apply several refactorizations to keep the codebase clean, flexible, and scalable. 🛠️ Refactorizations Completed Before diving into authentication, we improved core structures: 📱 Added a mobile menu using npm install flowbite + import "flowbite" 🎨 Updated mobile menu styling 🧩 Created navigation, table, and form components for DRY code 🗂️ Moved layouts into Blade components (@extends('xxx') ➜ ) 👥 Added new layout shells: empty and guest 🔐 Authentication vs. Authorization Authentication = Who are you? Authorization = What are you allowed to do? 📘 Laravel Docs: 👉 Authentication — https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/authentication 👉 Authorization — https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/authorization ⚙️ Installation Options Depending on your project setup, Laravel gives you multiple ways to integrate auth: For New Apps 🚀 Laravel Starter Kits (React, Vue, Livewire) For Existing Apps 🌬️ Laravel Breeze 🛡️ Laravel Fortify Useful Links: 🔗 Starter Kits — https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/starter-kits 🔗 Breeze — https://github.com/laravel/breeze 🔗 Fortify — https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/fortify 🛡️ Laravel Fortify Setup (Summary) Installation 1️⃣ composer require laravel/fortify 2️⃣ php artisan fortify:install 3️⃣ php artisan migrate Configuration Review settings in config/fortify Example: Registration View Binding // App/Providers/FortifyServiceProvider.php (partial) public function boot(): void { Fortify::registerView(function () { return view('auth.register'); }); } If you're enjoying the series, don't forget to Like, Comment, and Subscribe — it helps TekCasts grow! 🙌 #Laravel #PHP #LaravelFortify #LaravelBreeze #WebDevelopment #FullStack #CleanCode #BladeComponents #Authentication #Authorization #TekCasts	Thu, Jan 15, 2026	16m:36s
		21	Fortify Features & Breeze Views In this video, we build out the authentication views for our Laravel survey application. We continue integrating Laravel Fortify, but now focus on the Blade side of things — customizing the registration and login screens and wiring them to Fortify’s backend actions. You’ll learn: ✨ How Fortify expects your views to be structured ✨ How to adapt the Breeze templates to your app ✨ How to customize labels, errors, and layout ✨ How to create a cohesive guest layout for all auth screens 🔗 Resources - Laravel Starter Kits: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/starter-kits - Laravel Breeze: https://github.com/laravel/breeze - Laravel Fortify: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/fortify 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #LaravelFortify #PHP #WebDevelopment #FullStack #BackendDevelopment #Blade #Authentication #TekCasts #LaravelThePragmaticWay #CodingTutorials #LearnLaravel #CleanCode	Tue, Jan 20, 2026	16m:48s
		22	Auth using Fortify & Breeze In this video, we bring Laravel’s authentication system to life by pairing Fortify’s backend features with Breeze’s simple, clean Blade views. This creates a complete, customizable starter kit without the complexity of Inertia or Livewire. You’ll learn how these two tools fit together and how to leverage them to build real-world authentication flows. 🔥 What You’ll Learn - How Breeze and Fortify work together - Review of all Fortify routes and features - Registration and login flows - Email verification - Password reset workflow - Updating profile information - Changing passwords - Session handling and protections - How this setup fits into the bigger picture of building your app 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #LaravelFortify #LaravelBreeze #Authentication #WebDevelopment #PHP #FullStack #LaravelTutorial #LearnLaravel #TekCasts #LaravelThePragmaticWay	Thu, Jan 22, 2026	15m:7s
		23	New Fortify + Breeze Package In this video we walk through my custom fork of Laravel Breeze (repo: rcravens/breeze), showing how to get a full authentication system up and running in Laravel — with views, routes, and backend logic all wired up thanks to Laravel Fortify + Breeze. Whether you’re building a brand-new Laravel project or retrofitting auth into an existing one, this setup gives you a clean, flexible, and fully functional auth flow that’s easy to customize. ✅ What You’ll Get - A minimal auth scaffold that “just works” — login, registration, password reset, email verification, profile update, password change, and more. - Blade-based views + Tailwind styling for a clean UI. - Full route list and handlers (Fortify + Breeze) including register, login, logout, password reset, email verification, profile update, etc. - A structure that works in fresh projects or existing Laravel apps that didn’t start with a “starter kit.” 🔧 How to Use It - `composer require rcravens/breeze` - Run `php artisan breeze:install`, choosing "Laravel Forge + Blade Views" and your preferred options. - Migrate your database, compile assets — and you’re ready to go. - Explore routes like /register, /login, /forgot-password, /profile, etc. — everything is wired up for you. 📚 Useful Links & Resources - GitHub Repo: https://github.com/rcravens/breeze - Official Laravel Starter Kits documentation (covers Fortify + Breeze): https://laravel.com/docs/starter-kits - Laravel Breeze overview article: https://laravel-news.com/laravel-breeze 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #LaravelBreeze #LaravelFortify #PHP #WebDevelopment #Auth #TailwindCSS #FullStack #OpenSource #TekCasts #CleanCode #Backend #Frontend #DeveloperTools	Fri, Nov 28, 2025	6m:55s

Middleware

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		24	Middleware Basics In today’s video, we’re digging into one of the most important — and most misunderstood — parts of the Laravel request lifecycle: middleware. If you’ve ever wondered how Laravel transforms an incoming HTTP request into a response… or how authentication, sessions, CSRF protection, and even custom logic happen automatically — this video is for you. ⭐ What You’ll Learn In this lesson, we break down the core concepts behind Laravel middleware, including: - How middleware modifies request and response data - How it can short-circuit the request lifecycle - Where middleware fits inside Laravel’s 5-step request lifecycle - How route files are registered inside bootstrap/app.php - How to attach middleware to individual routes, route groups, or out-of-the-box groups like web and api - How to explore your middleware stack using: php artisan route:list -v We also walk through real examples showing how middleware groups (like auth, verified, and password.confirm) cascade to define route behavior. 🔗 Resources • Request Lifecycle — https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/lifecycle • Routing — https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/routing 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #LaravelMiddleware #LaravelRouting #PHPTutorials #LearnLaravel #LaravelTips #BackendDevelopment #FullStackDevelopment #WebDevTutorials #LaravelEcosystem #LaravelFramework #CodeBetter #BuildWithLaravel	Tue, Jan 27, 2026	20m:26s
		25	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. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #Coding #Developers #Programming #FullStack #TekCasts	Thu, Jan 29, 2026	17m:2s

Sessions & Cookies

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		26	Cookies In this video, we explore Laravel Cookies—what they are, how they work under the hood, and how your Laravel application can set, retrieve, and delete them. Cookies are one of the foundational building blocks for maintaining state in a stateless HTTP world, and understanding them sets the stage for working with sessions effectively. In this video you will learn: 🔹 What Cookies Are - Why HTTP is stateless and how cookies help solve that - How cookies allow the server to remember clients across requests - Where cookies are stored and how they travel between client and server - Client-side vs server-side visibility (HTTP-only vs accessible from JavaScript) - Common uses (session identifiers, personalization, analytics, etc.) 🔹 Setting Cookies in Laravel - You’ll see how Laravel allows you to: - Queue cookies to be added to the outgoing response - Attach cookies directly to a response object - Configure cookie attributes such as expiration time, path, domain, secure mode, and HTTP-only mode - Work with encrypted cookies (default in Laravel) - We walk through multiple approaches, and the vid eo explains when you’d use each one. 🔹 Retrieving Cookies We compare: - Raw PHP cookie access - Laravel’s cookie retrieval helpers - Using the request object to access cookies - Automatically decrypted values in Laravel 🔹 Deleting Cookies You’ll see how to invalidate cookies and remove them properly from the browser. 🔹 Production Considerations We discuss: - Why you almost always want encrypted or signed cookies - What types of data should not be stored in cookies - Practical tips for secure cookie handling 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #BackendDevelopment #CodingBestPractices #TechEducation #LearnToCode #TekCasts	Tue, Feb 3, 2026	22m:49s
		27	Sessions Learn how Laravel sessions work, why they matter, and how to choose and use the right session driver for your app. 📺 In this video you'll learn: - What sessions are and how they let servers remember users across requests. - The trade-offs between session storage drivers: file, cookie, database, redis, memcached, dynamodb, and the built-in array driver for testing. - How to store, retrieve, and delete session data in Laravel (helpers, request-based APIs, and Blade usage). - Flash data: how Laravel flashes temporary data (e.g., validation errors) and how to reflash/keep it. - Session lifecycle operations: regenerate session ID, invalidate session, and best practices for production. - Guidance on which driver to pick based on scalability, speed, persistence, and reliability. ✨ Who is this for? Backend devs and full-stack devs building real Laravel apps who want practical guidance for session management and how session choice affects production behavior. 🔧 Useful links (mentioned in the video): - Official Laravel Sessions docs — https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/session 📌 Key takeaways: - Sessions store server-side data tied to a user via a cookie (session id). - Driver choice matters — Redis is great for high-traffic apps; file or database may suffice for smaller apps. - Use flash data for one-time messages (validation errors, success notices). - Always regenerate/invalidate sessions appropriately on sensitive actions (login/logout) to help prevent fixation. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #LaravelSessions #SessionManagement #PHP #WebDevelopment #BackendDevelopment #FullStackDev #TekCasts	Thu, Feb 5, 2026	26m:12s
		28	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. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #FullStackDev #BackendDevelopment #CodingTutorial #TekCasts	Tue, Feb 10, 2026	24m:49s

RESTful Routes & Survey Setup

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		29	Resource Controllers In this video, we continue building our survey application by exploring Resource Controllers, CRUD operations, and RESTful routing conventions in Laravel. You’ll learn how Laravel connects controllers, models, and routes using expressive, convention-driven patterns that dramatically simplify your codebase. What We Cover ✔ Controllers - Off-loading logic from route files - Organizing application behavior into coherent action methods - Coordinating Models and Views ✔ Eloquent Models - Representing database tables as objects - Simplifying database interactions - Handling model relationships - Working with PHP instead of SQL ✔ CRUD Fundamentals - Create, Read, Update, Delete - Why nearly every model needs these operations ✔ RESTful Routes - Mapping CRUD operations to HTTP verbs - GET, POST, PUT/PATCH, DELETE - Using _method to simulate non-GET/POST verbs in forms ✔ Resource Controllers - Scaffolding with: `php artisan make:controller SurveyController --resource` - Understanding index, create, store, show, edit, update, destroy - Conventions that keep your controllers clean and predictable ✔ Resourceful Routing - Connecting all CRUD routes with a single line: `Route::resource('surveys', SurveyController::class);` - Overview table of every generated route, verb, URI, and action ✔ Nested Resources & Relationships - Handling survey sections with nested resource routes - Using ->scoped() to ensure child models belong to parent models - Auto-generated nested route names (e.g., surveys.sections.index) Links & References - Laravel Resource Controllers Documentation: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/controllers#resource-controllers If you're learning Laravel the pragmatic way — by building real features, with clean code, using the framework as intended — hit subscribe and follow the full series! #Laravel #PHP #RESTful #CRUD #CleanCode #WebDev #TekCasts	Thu, Feb 12, 2026	19m:14s
		30	Survey List In this episode, we continue building out our survey application using RESTful Routes in Laravel — focusing specifically on the List / Index functionality. This is where your application begins to feel real: retrieving data, showing ownership, and giving users access to CRUD operations. 👉 We walk through: - Migrating the surveys table to include a user_id owner - Building a clean, readable table view to list all surveys - Providing quick access to create, view, update, and delete actions - Preparing the foundation for the full management workflow This is a hands-on, practical lesson designed to reinforce core Laravel conventions and REST architecture—no fluff, just real-world application structure. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #CodingTutorial #FullStackDevelopment #BackendDevelopment #LearnLaravel #SoftwareEngineering #Developers #BuildInPublic #TekCasts	Tue, Feb 17, 2026	22m:7s
		31	Survey Simple Create In this episode of Pragmatic Laravel, we continue building out our survey management features by implementing the Create workflow for a RESTful resource. This video focuses on wiring together the controller, view, and form handler needed to create new surveys while following Laravel’s RESTful conventions and keeping responsibilities clearly separated. ✅ What You’ll Learn: - How the create action fits into a RESTful resource controller - Building the survey.create Blade template - Handling form submissions with the store action - Keeping controllers clean and intentional - Preparing your application for full CRUD workflows This is a key step toward building real-world admin and management features using Laravel’s conventions—without unnecessary complexity. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #BackendDevelopment #RESTfulAPI #SoftwareEngineering #CodingTutorial #TekCasts	Thu, Feb 19, 2026	22m

Authorization & Survey Management

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		32	Authorization / Laravel Policies In this video, we tackle authorization in Laravel and close an important gap in our RESTful workflow. You’ll learn how to define what a user can do, enforce those rules cleanly, and secure your application using Laravel Policies — without cluttering your controllers or routes. What we cover: - Cleaning up loose ends from earlier videos - Defining authorization rules on the User model - Generating and structuring Laravel Policies - Enforcing permissions via: Controllers, Middleware, Routes, the AuthorizesRequests trait - Reviewing real authorization logic across: SurveyPolicy, SurveyController, SurveyRequest, Section & Question controllers - Seeing what happens when a user is not authorized This is a critical step toward building secure, maintainable, production-ready Laravel applications — especially when working with RESTful routes and resource controllers. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #LaravelAuthorization #LaravelPolicies #PHP #WebDevelopment #TekCasts	Tue, Feb 24, 2026	17m:59s
		33	Survey Preview When you’re building and managing surveys, you need a safe way to see exactly what respondents will experience — before you publish anything. In this episode of Pragmatic Laravel, we add a Survey Preview feature for survey creators and managers. This preview allows the person building the survey to view it exactly as a participant would, without making it publicly accessible. Rather than creating something new from scratch, we reuse the existing “take survey” view, wire it through proper RESTful routes, and expose it intentionally as a management-only capability. What you’ll learn in this video: - How to add a manager-only survey preview - Designing preview routes that fit RESTful conventions - Reusing existing Blade views without duplication - Connecting routes, handlers, and views cleanly - Adding preview links to survey management screens - Thinking intentionally about who a feature is for and why This is a practical example of building real-world management features while keeping your Laravel application clean, readable, and maintainable. 🎥 Watch more at TekCasts: https://tekcasts.com 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #WebDevelopment #TekCasts	Thu, Feb 26, 2026	6m:11s
		34	Survey Delete Deleting data is easy. Deleting data safely and intentionally is where real applications are made. In this episode of Pragmatic Laravel, we implement survey deletion the right way — with confirmation, clear feedback, and reusable infrastructure that works across the entire app. Rather than wiring up one-off JavaScript or brittle confirmation dialogs, we build a flexible alert system that supports: - Server-side flash alerts - Client-side JavaScript alerts - Reusable confirmation dialogs via data-* attributes What you’ll learn: - How to wire up the destroy action using RESTful resource routes - How to confirm destructive actions before they happen - How to build a reusable alert/confirmation system in Laravel - How PHP and JavaScript can work together cleanly - How to improve UX without sacrificing maintainability Topics covered: - Resourceful routes and controllers - Delete buttons with confirmation - Flash messaging infrastructure - JavaScript-powered confirmation dialogs - data-confirm patterns for scalable UI behavior This approach scales beyond surveys — you can reuse it anywhere you need confirmations, alerts, or user feedback across your Laravel application. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Mar 3, 2026	11m:26s

Advanced Survey Management

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		35	Survey Edit / Update In this video, we build the edit/update experience for surveys using RESTful routes in Laravel. We focus on creating a clean, scalable user experience that sets the foundation for managing surveys, sections, and questions—without reaching for Livewire (yet). You’ll see how to wire up resourceful routes, connect them to controller actions, and design views that support future growth. We’ll also look at how Laravel Breeze uses modal dialogs with Alpine.js, and how those patterns can be reused in real applications. This is another step in building a practical, real-world Laravel application, emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful UX decisions. What you’ll learn: - How to implement edit/update flows with RESTful resource routes - Connecting list views to edit pages cleanly - Using resource controllers effectively - Designing views that support future survey management features - Leveraging Laravel Breeze + Alpine.js modal patterns - Preparing your application for section and question management Up Next: - Managing survey sections - Managing survey questions - Continuing to evolve the survey management experience If you’re looking to move beyond “toy examples” and see how Laravel is used pragmatically, this series is for you. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Mar 5, 2026	12m:38s
		36	Survey Section Management In this video, we continue building real-world survey management features by implementing edit, update, and delete functionality for survey sections using Laravel’s RESTful routes. This lesson is intentionally hands-on and framework-light. We focus on clarity, structure, and maintainability — not shortcuts or magic abstractions. You’ll see how to wire together views, controllers, and routes in a way that scales naturally as your application grows. What You’ll Learn: - How to use resourceful routes for editing, updating, and deleting survey sections - Building edit views without Livewire (by design) - Implementing edit, update, and destroy controller actions - Keeping your RESTful flow clean and predictable - Laying the groundwork for managing more complex survey data Why This Matters: Editing nested data (like survey sections) is where many applications start to feel fragile. This lesson shows how to structure things so changes are intentional, traceable, and easy to reason about. What’s Next: We’re wrapping up survey structure management and moving into: - Managing survey questions - More advanced relationships - Continued focus on pragmatic, real-world Laravel patterns If you’re building Laravel applications that need to be maintainable, understandable, and production-ready, this lesson is for you. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Mar 10, 2026	9m:21s
		37	Survey Question Management Managing questions is the final — and most important — piece of a real-world survey system. In this video, we complete the survey management workflow by implementing full question management using clean, RESTful Laravel patterns. This includes editing, updating, deleting, and previewing questions — all without relying on Livewire or heavy abstractions. We focus on clarity, maintainability, and patterns that scale as your application grows. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to: - Finish wiring up remaining controller action methods - Design RESTful routes for nested resources - Build views for managing survey questions - Implement edit, update, delete, and preview actions - Keep controllers focused and views readable - Complete the full survey management feature set This video wraps up the management features portion of the series and demonstrates how small, intentional design decisions add up to a clean, professional Laravel application. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Mar 12, 2026	22m:30s
		38	Conditional Questions Conditional questions are where surveys start to feel intelligent. In this lesson, we extend our Laravel survey application to support conditional questions — questions that only appear when a parent question is answered with specific values. This is a common real-world requirement, and we implement it using clear data modeling and pragmatic UI decisions. No Livewire. No magic. Just well-structured Laravel, PHP, and JavaScript working together. What you’ll learn in this video: - What conditional questions are and how they work - Updating the view to show: required & conditional questions - Restricting parent questions to those with allowed values - Enhancing the data model (PHP + JavaScript) - Building a UI to select a parent question - Update UI to choose allowed parent values via multi-select - Designing for future extensibility and maintainability This video continues the Pragmatic Laravel philosophy: focus on clarity, intent, and long-term maintainability over shortcuts. Coming Soon - We move beyond management features and into full application behavior: - Survey invites and activation - Email templates and delivery - Dashboards, summaries, and reporting - Background jobs and queues - Data visualization and charts 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Mar 17, 2026	26m:23s

Survey Invites

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		39	Survey Invites Survey invites are where an internal tool starts to behave like a real application. In this video, we begin the Survey Invites feature by making the necessary MVC changes to support invite-only surveys. This is a foundational step that touches the database, controllers, and views — and sets us up for email notifications and automation in upcoming lessons. No Livewire. No shortcuts. Just pragmatic Laravel development with clear intent and maintainable structure. 📌 What We Cover: • Designing the data model for survey invites • Updating existing tables with new invite-related fields • Writing database migrations and post-migration patches • Introducing a resourceful InviteController • Building CRUD views for managing survey invites 🧠 Why This Matters: Survey invites introduce real-world complexity: • Tracking who was invited • Knowing when a survey was started • Recording when an invite was last opened or notified Handling this cleanly requires thoughtful MVC changes — not hacks. ▶️ Up Next: • Survey Email Notifications (development & production) • Automated notifications using jobs and queues 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Mar 19, 2026	38m:21s
		40	Sending Emails Sending emails is where your application officially leaves the sandbox and enters the real world. In this video, we finish the Survey Invites feature by wiring up Laravel Mail—covering everything from configuration to creating and sending real email invitations. Along the way, we clean up loose ends, refactor problem areas, and tighten up the user experience so the system feels intentional, not accidental. What you’ll learn in this lesson: ✨ Refactoring and cleanup after major feature work 🔐 Managing invite-only surveys correctly 📬 Laravel mail drivers, transports, and configuration 📨 Creating a Mailable class 🚀 Sending survey invite emails (dev + prod-ready) 🧩 UI improvements and edge-case handling No Livewire. No shortcuts. Just clear MVC design, maintainable code, and real-world Laravel patterns you can reuse with confidence. 🎯 Up Next: Automated notifications using jobs and queues — taking survey invites to the next level. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Mar 24, 2026	29m:23s
		41	Jobs, Queues, and Workers As your application grows, long-running work doesn’t belong in the request cycle. In this lesson, we take a deep, practical dive into Laravel Jobs & Queues by moving survey email notifications into background workers. You’ll learn not just how queues work — but when and why to use them, and how to operate them confidently in production. No hand-waving. No “just install Redis and hope.” This is queues the way real applications use them. 🎯 What We Cover: - Refactors & cleanup from the email implementation - Why queues exist (architecture & scalability) - Choosing queue drivers for dev vs production - Managing queue workers locally and in production - Supervisor configuration for long-running workers - Monitoring with Horizon, Pulse, and Telescope - Handling failures, retries, delays, and backoff - Creating and dispatching a real job - Job chaining, batching, and advanced queue features 🧠 Hands-On Implementation - You’ll build and dispatch a real job: - SendSurveyInviteJob - Retry and backoff strategies - Sync vs async dispatching - Delayed and deferred jobs - Error handling and manual failures All wired directly into the survey invite workflow. 🕒 Up Next - Scheduling Tasks & Jobs: - Laravel Scheduler - Automated notifications - Time-based workflows 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Mar 26, 2026	29m:41s

Workflow & Automation

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		42	Survey State Machine 🧠 State drives behavior. Behavior drives architecture. In this episode of Pragmatic Laravel, we introduce a state machine to model the survey workflow — giving surveys clear, intentional states and safe, predictable transitions. Instead of scattering conditional logic across controllers and views, we centralize behavior using enums, dashboards, and explicit state awareness. This lays the foundation for upcoming event-driven features and listeners. 🔍 What You’ll Learn: - What a state machine is — and why it matters - How survey states shape application behavior - Updating a SurveyStatus enum for clarity and safety - Building a dedicated Survey Dashboard - Refactoring UI components to reflect workflow state - Preparing your app for event-based programming 🛠 Hands-On Topics: - Update SurveyStatus enum - Create Survey/DashboardController - Build survey/dashboard.blade.php - Add new workflow-aware routes - Enhance survey/_survey-header.blade.php 🗺 Roadmap — What’s Next: - Event-Based Programming - Survey Listeners 🚀 This episode is a key turning point — transforming the app from features to a true workflow-driven system. If you care about maintainable Laravel applications, this one’s for you. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Mar 31, 2026	16m:7s
		43	Events & Listeners In this episode, we introduce event-based programming to the survey application and take a big step toward a decoupled, scalable architecture. Instead of tightly coupling business logic inside controllers, we model real application behavior using events and listeners — allowing the system to react naturally to state changes and user actions. This is where the workflow starts to feel alive. What You’ll Learn: ⚡ Event-Based Programming Concepts: • What events are (and what they are not) • Decoupling producers from consumers • Synchronous vs asynchronous execution • Why events scale better than conditionals 🛠 Hands-On Laravel Events: • Creating observable events • Creating multiple listeners • Dispatching events from your domain • Queuing listeners for background execution • Convention-based auto-discovery 📚 Official Docs: https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/events 🗺 What’s Next: Laravel Commands 💡 This episode lays the foundation for truly reactive Laravel applications. If you’ve ever felt your controllers getting “too smart,” this is the pattern you’ve been looking for. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Apr 2, 2026	19m:26s

Survey Results

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		44	Daily Stats & Commands As your application matures, data aggregation and automation become critical. In this episode of Pragmatic Laravel, we shift from raw survey responses to actionable insights by building daily statistics, dashboards, background jobs, and Artisan commands — all using real-world Laravel patterns. This isn’t theory. This is how production Laravel apps evolve. 🧠 What You’ll Learn: - How to design and store daily aggregated survey statistics - Building a survey dashboard with daily stats & detailed results - Creating and running custom Artisan commands - When to use jobs vs commands (and how they work together) - Generating realistic fake data to test reporting workflows - Wiring UI actions (like “Refresh”) to backend jobs 🛠 Hands-On Topics Covered: - Daily Stats Table & Schema - RecordSurveyStats Job - Survey Dashboard Views - Artisan Commands (php artisan make:command) - Realistic survey result visualization 🧩 Why This Matters: Most tutorials stop at “saving data.” This episode shows how to: - Summarize data - Automate insights - Prepare for scheduling & reporting - Build features users actually care about This is the bridge between CRUD apps and real business software. ▶️ Up Next: Scheduling job using the Laravel Task Scheduler 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Apr 7, 2026	32m:20s
		45	Daily Digest & Task Scheduler Building features is one thing. Automating insight delivery is where real applications shine. In this episode, we wire up a Daily Digest Email system that automatically summarizes survey results and delivers them on a schedule—using real Laravel patterns you’ll use in production. 🚀 What You’ll Learn: - Creating queued jobs for email delivery - Building Markdown mailables - Writing custom Artisan commands - Scheduling recurring tasks with Laravel Scheduler - Coordinating jobs, commands, and cron - Production vs development scheduling workflows 🛠 Hands-On Topics: - SendDigestEmailJob (queued background processing) - SurveyDigest mailable with Markdown templates - SendDigestEmails Artisan command - Daily scheduling with schedule:run - Cron configuration best practices - Safe execution with withoutOverlapping() and onOneServer() 🧠 Why This Matters. This episode ties together: - Jobs & queues - Commands - Task scheduling - Email delivery - Real-world automation patterns Exactly how maintainable Laravel applications evolve beyond CRUD. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Apr 9, 2026	20m:23s
		46	Summary & Detailed Reports In this video, we finish the Survey Results module by turning raw responses into useful insights. You’ll build both high-level summaries and detailed response views, giving administrators the clarity they actually need — without overengineering or magic abstractions. 🛠️ What You’ll Build: ✅ Answer Summaries - Aggregate survey answers - Display meaningful summaries - Prepare data for real-world reporting ✅ Detailed Responses - Create detailed response views - Display individual submissions clearly - Balance performance with readability This is where data becomes information — and where most “tutorial apps” stop short. 🧠 What You’ll Learn: - How to structure summary logic cleanly - When to aggregate vs. when to show raw data - How to design result views that scale - Practical Laravel patterns for reporting features No dashboards for the sake of dashboards. Just pragmatic, maintainable Laravel. 🎥 Watch the full Pragmatic Laravel series exclusively on TekCasts 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Apr 14, 2026	15m:44s

Marketing Page

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		47	Public Survey Page 🚀 Make your surveys inviting, shareable, and public-ready In this episode of Pragmatic Laravel, we shift from internal tooling to public-facing surveys — transforming raw survey listings into marketing-friendly experiences that people actually want to click. This is where backend structure meets frontend presentation. 🧠 What You’ll Build: 🗂️ Public Survey Cards - More inviting, marketing-style survey cards - Clear descriptions instead of placeholder text 🗄️ Database Improvements - Migration to add description and image_url - Clean, forward-compatible data modeling ✏️ Survey Management Updates - Update create/edit modals to support descriptions - Display descriptions directly on edit pages 📧 Better Invites - Enhance invite emails with images and descriptions - Make surveys feel intentional — not transactional 🧩 Why This Matters: Most Laravel tutorials stop at “it works.” This lesson focuses on how it feels to users — and how small design and data decisions dramatically improve adoption. If you care about: - Real-world UX - Clean migrations - Maintainable UI changes - Professional-grade Laravel apps This video is for you. 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Apr 16, 2026	21m:37s
		48	Image Uploads & Storage Real-world file handling without the fluff! In this episode of Pragmatic Laravel, we add image uploads to our public survey marketing pages and tie up the loose ends that turn a feature into something production-ready. You’ll learn how Laravel’s filesystem abstraction works and how to apply it cleanly in both create and edit flows—without overengineering. ✨ What we cover in this video: 🔹 Laravel Storage Fundamentals - How Laravel supports multiple disks (local, public, S3, FTP, etc.) - Why the Storage facade matters - When abstraction actually helps 🔹 Hands-On Implementation - Review existing filesystem configuration - Run php artisan storage:link - Add image upload fields to forms - Handle uploads in controllers - Persist image paths cleanly - Reuse the same logic for create & edit flows 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CleanCode #TekCasts	Tue, Apr 21, 2026	24m:9s

Final Thoughts

		Episode	Title	Release	Length
		49	Deployment Considerations Deployment is where great code meets reality. In this episode of the Pragmatic Laravel series, we step back from writing features and look at what it actually takes to run a Laravel application in production—reliably, securely, and with confidence. This isn’t a step-by-step hosting tutorial. It’s a big-picture, practical guide to thinking about deployment the right way. 🧠 What You’ll Learn: 🖥 Deployment Lifecycle 1. Acquire Servers 2. Networking & security 3. Provisioning Environments 4. Deploying Code & Data 5. Configuration & Secrets 6. Monitoring & Observability 🏗 Deployment Architectures - Single-tier setups - Multi-tier architectures - Highly-available systems ⚙️ Automation & Repeatability - Infrastructure as Code - Provisioning & deployment scripts - CI/CD pipelines - Tools like Ansible, Laravel Forge, & Envoyer ☁️ Managed Services - When convenience beats control - Choosing services intentionally - Platforms like Fly.io & Laravel Cloud 📊 Monitoring & Visibility - Laravel Horizon & Pulse - Nightwatch - Sentry, Posthog, UptimeRobot 🎯 Who This Is For - Developers ready to ship real applications - Laravel devs moving beyond localhost - Anyone who wants to understand deployment—not fear it 💥 About the Series: Pragmatic Laravel focuses on building real applications with Laravel — emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and thoughtful design decisions instead of shortcuts or magic. #Laravel #PragmaticLaravel #PHP #CICD #Deployment #Architecture #CleanCode #TekCasts	Thu, Apr 23, 2026	16m:43s