Laravel 8 New Features

Laravel Jetstream

Laravel Jetstream is a beautifully designed application temporary structure for Laravel. Jetstream provides the main starting point for your next project and it includes login, registration, email verification, two-factor authentication, session management, API support via Laravel Sanctum, and optional team management. Laravel Jetstream replaces and improves upon the legacy authentication UI scaffolding available for previous versions of Laravel.

Models Directory

Now you can access all your models from new directory that's app/Models, instead of app folder all commands also default assumes that they get all the models from app/Models.

Model Factory Classes

Eloquent model factories have been entirely re-written as class based factories and improved to have first-class relationship support. For example, the UserFactory included with Laravel is written like so:

<?php

namespace Database\Factories;

use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;

class UserFactory extends Factory
{
    /**
     * The name of the factory's corresponding model.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $model = User::class;

    /**
     * Define the model's default state.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function definition()
    {
        return [
            'name' => $this->faker->name,
            'email' => $this->faker->unique()->safeEmail,
            'email_verified_at' => now(),
            'password' => '$2y$10$92IXUNpkjO0rOQ5byMi.Ye4oKoEa3Ro9llC/.og/at2.uheWG/igi', // password
            'remember_token' => Str::random(10),
        ];
    }
}

Thanks to the new HasFactory trait available on generated models, the model factory may be used like so:

use App\Models\User;

User::factory()->count(50)->create();

Since model factories are now simple PHP classes, state transformations may be written as class methods. In addition, you may add any other helper classes to your Eloquent model factory as needed.

For example, your User model might have a suspended state that modifies one of its default attribute values. You may define your state transformations using the base factory's state method. You may name your state method anything you like. After all, it's just a typical PHP method:

/**
 * Indicate that the user is suspended.
 *
 * @return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory
 */
public function suspended()
{
    return $this->state([
        'account_status' => 'suspended',
    ]);
}

After defining the state transformation method, we may use it like so:

use App\Models\User;

User::factory()->count(5)->suspended()->create();

 As mentioned, Laravel 8's model factories contain first class support for relationships. So, assuming our User model has a posts relationship method, we may simply run the following code to generate a user with three posts:

$users = User::factory()
            ->hasPosts(3, [
                'published' => false,
            ])
            ->create();

Migration Squashing

As you build your application, you may accumulate more and more migrations over time. This can lead to your migration directory becoming bloated with potentially hundreds of migrations. If you would like, you may now "squash" your migrations into a single SQL file. To get started, execute the schema:dump command:

php artisan schema:dump

// Dump the current database schema and prune all existing migrations...
php artisan schema:dump --prune

 When you execute this command, Laravel will write a "schema" file to your database/schema directory. Now, when you attempt to migrate your database and no other migrations have been executed, Laravel will execute the schema file's SQL first. After executing the schema file's commands, Laravel will execute any remaining migrations that were not part of the schema dump.

Job Batching

Laravel's job batching feature allows you to easily execute a batch of jobs and then perform some action when the batch of jobs has completed executing.

The new batch method of the Bus facade may be used to dispatch a batch of jobs. Of course, batching is primarily useful when combined with completion callbacks. So, you may use the then, catch, and finally methods to define completion callbacks for the batch. Each of these callbacks will receive an Illuminate\Bus\Batch instance when they are invoked:

use App\Jobs\ProcessPodcast;
use App\Podcast;
use Illuminate\Bus\Batch;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Batch;
use Throwable;

$batch = Bus::batch([
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(1)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(2)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(3)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(4)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(5)),
])->then(function (Batch $batch) {
    // All jobs completed successfully...
})->catch(function (Batch $batch, Throwable $e) {
    // First batch job failure detected...
})->finally(function (Batch $batch) {
    // The batch has finished executing...
})->dispatch();

return $batch->id;

Improved Rate Limiting

Laravel's request rate limiter feature has been augmented with more flexibility and power, while still maintaining backwards compatibility with previous release's throttle middleware API.

Rate limiters are defined using the RateLimiter facade's for method. The for method accepts a rate limiter name and a Closure that returns the limit configuration that should apply to routes that are assigned this rate limiter:

use Illuminate\Cache\RateLimiting\Limit;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\RateLimiter;

RateLimiter::for('global', function (Request $request) {
    return Limit::perMinute(1000);
});

Since rate limiter callbacks receive the incoming HTTP request instance, you may build the appropriate rate limit dynamically based on the incoming request or authenticated user:

RateLimiter::for('uploads', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user()->vipCustomer()
                ? Limit::none()
                : Limit::perMinute(100);
});

Sometimes you may wish to segment rate limits by some arbitrary value. For example, you may wish to allow users to access a given route 100 times per minute per IP address. To accomplish this, you may use the by method when building your rate limit:

RateLimiter::for('uploads', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user()->vipCustomer()
                ? Limit::none()
                : Limit::perMinute(100)->by($request->ip());  });                    

 

Rate limiters may be attached to routes or route groups using the throttle middleware. The throttle middleware accepts the name of the rate limiter you wish to assign to the route:

Route::middleware(['throttle:uploads'])->group(function () {
    Route::post('/audio', function () {
        //
    });

    Route::post('/video', function () {
        //
    });
});

Closure Dispatch / Chain

Using the new catch method, you may now provide a Closure that should be executed if a queued Closure fails to complete successfully after exhausting all of your queue's configured retry attempts:

 

 use Throwable;
dispatch(function () use ($podcast) {
    $podcast->publish();
})->catch(function (Throwable $e) {
    // This job has failed...
});

Dynamic Blade Components

Sometimes you may need to render a component but not know which component should be rendered until runtime. In this situation, you may now use Laravel's built-in dynamic-component component to render the component based on a runtime value or variable:

<x-dynamic-component :component="$componentName" class="mt-4" />