Explore By Video

Setting Up the Package Structure

In this video, we start coding! 🚀 We’ll create the necessary directory structure, initialize a Git repository, and write the initial code for our PHP package.

📌 What you’ll learn:
✅ Setting up the directory structure
✅ Initializing a Git repository
✅ Writing the first version of the package

💡 By the end of this video, you’ll have a solid foundation for your package!

🔔 Subscribe for more PHP tutorials!

🔗 Resources:
• GitHub: Getting Started

Setup a Development Environment

Before you start coding in PHP, you need the right tools! In this video, we’ll guide you through setting up a local development environment step by step. You’ll learn how to install PHP, set up a local server using XAMPP, MAMP, or the built-in PHP server, and explore containerized options like Docker. We’ll also discuss different code editors, from lightweight options like Sublime Text to powerful IDEs like PHPStorm and Visual Studio Code. By the end of this video, you’ll have everything configured and ready to start coding in PHP like a pro! 🚀

Simple Frontend Architecture

✨ Before you write thousands of lines of JavaScript, you need a solid foundation.

In this video, we’ll explore how to structure frontend applications so your code stays organized, modular, and maintainable — even as your project grows.

You’ll learn:
⚡ Why separation of concerns prevents “spaghetti JS”
📦 The power of modularization (breaking one big file into smaller, focused ones)
🛠 Principles like YAGNI, DRY, SRP, and Decoupling to guide clean architecture
🔄 How event-driven patterns make your apps more reactive and less fragile

To wrap things up, we’ll also walk through a quick example of creating a custom browser event — showing how components can communicate without tight coupling.

👨‍💻 This isn’t about writing tons of code — it’s about learning the architectural principles that make every line of code easier to understand and maintain.

Software

Now that the hardware’s wired up, it’s time to breathe life into the Smart Garage Door with code! 🚀

In this episode, we walk through the entire software that powers the project — written with clean, object-oriented design to keep things modular and maintainable 🧼👨‍💻.

We do a full code review and break down the key classes that make everything tick:

🔹 DoorSensor – encapsulates logic for detecting the door’s position
🔹 DoorButton – handles interactions with the door opener button
🔹 GarageDoor – the high-level controller that integrates with Apple Home using HomeSpan. It pulls it all together and exposes the device as a HomeKit accessory 🍏🏠

You’ll see how these components work together — and how dependency injection keeps things clean by passing DoorSensor and DoorButton instances right into the GarageDoor class constructor.

Whether you’re into embedded dev, smart home integrations, or just love clean code, this video dives into the software heart of the project. Let’s build smart! 💡💻

Static HTML to PHP

It’s time to bring our static site to life! In this video, we take the first step toward dynamic content by converting our plain HTML files into PHP. 🧩

Here’s what we’ll cover:
• Renaming .html files to .php ✅
• Updating the navigation links in two key places on each page for consistency 🔗

By the end of this video, our project will be PHP-ready and set up for future enhancements. This version is tagged in the repo as v2-php-files for easy reference. 🏷️

It’s a small change with big impact—let’s keep the momentum going! 🚀

Static Methods and Properties

Ever wondered when to use static properties and methods? 🤔 In this video, we break it all down! 🔍

We’ll start with a quick refresher on normal properties and methods, then dive into their static counterparts. 🏗️ What’s the difference? Static members belong to the class—shared across all instances—while normal members are instance-specific. 🌎➡️📦

But wait—static properties aren’t constants! ⚠️ We’ll explore constant properties using const and discuss real-world use cases where static methods shine. ✨

By the end, you’ll know exactly when and why to use static members in your PHP projects! 💡💻 Let’s go! 🎬

Submitting Reviews

It’s time to let users have their say! In this video, we implement the “Leave a Review” feature, allowing users to submit feedback on photos directly from the app. 💬

Here’s what’s packed into version v17-leave-review:


Add a POST route to handle form submissions 🛤️
Stub out the PhotoController::store method as our entry point for review handling
Wire up the review form and hook it into the controller 🧵
Introduce basic validation to catch missing fields or bad data 🧼
Add temporary dd('TODO') calls as placeholders for future redirects
Build the SQL insert logic using the photo_id from the query string 🔗
Validate that the photo exists before inserting a review to maintain data integrity 🔒
Refactor the Database class:
Rename exec() to raw() for clarity
Add a new execute() method to handle parameterized inserts and return the number of affected rows ⚙️


By the end of this video, users can leave their thoughts—and our app takes one more step toward being fully interactive. 🌟

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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