Laravel 5.2 — A Look at what’s coming

UPDATE: Laravel 5.2 is now released.

Laravel 5.2 development is underway and so far a few nice additions have been announced. Let’s take a look at everything we know is coming to the release.

#Auth Scaffolding

Making a come back is the auth scaffolding which will automatically create a base set of view files for authentication, registration, and password resets. This will be ran via:

php artisan make:auth

#Implicit model binding

Implicit model binding is a new feature that automatically binds a model to a route. Here is an example in code:

Route::get('/api/posts/{post}', function(Post $post) {
    return $post;
});

What this does is behind the scenes call Post::findOrFail($post) and injects it into the $post variable. For the seasoned Laravel developers, this is similar to the existing route model binding but now removes the step of having to bind it manually.

#Appending output from scheduled tasks

The Laravel Scheduler will now be able to append output from the task to a file.

$schedule->command('emails:send')
    ->hourly()
    ->appendOutputTo($filePath);

Previously, Laravel included a sendOutputTo option which would write the current results but not append.

#Laravel 5.2 Form Array Validation

This is a feature I’m excited about. Pretend you have a form with an array of input fields like this:

<p>
<input type="text" name="person[1][id]">
<input type="text" name="person[1][name]">
</p>
<p>
<input type="text" name="person[2][id]">
<input type="text" name="person[2][name]">
</p>

In Laravel 5.1 to add validation rules it required looping through and adding the rules individually. Instead of having to do all that it’s been “Laravelized” into this:

$v = Validator::make($request->all(), [
  'person.*.id' => 'exists:users.id',
  'person.*.name' => 'required:string',
]);

#Collections Wildcards

When using a collection and wanting to pull out data, you can now pass a * as a wildcard:

$posts->pluck(‘posts.*.title’);

This will return all title’s for all posts.

#Database Session Driver

The database session driver now includes user_id and ip_address so you can easily clear all sessions for a given user.

#MySQL JSON Column Types

MySQL 5.7.8 added support for a native JSON data type. Laravel 5.2 now adds support for this column type.

Upcoming Laravel 5.2 release also supports creating new MySQL JSON column types!

— Laravel (@laravelphp) November 13, 2015

#Middleware Groups

Laravel 5.2: middleware groups allow you to apply group of middlware to routes, https://t.co/qpEELi2SUn https://t.co/h3tIDe9yIb

— Taylor Otwell (@taylorotwell) December 9, 2015

#Bind Injection Values

Fresh Laravel 5.2 feature… bind injection values for simple class primitives that aren't type-hinted: https://t.co/FupcGQr5LD

— Taylor Otwell (@taylorotwell) December 17, 2015

#More To Come…

As the release date for Laravel 5.2 gets closer I’m certain more new features will be announced and I will keep this post updated along the way. Be sure and join the Laravel newsletter to stay up to date.