Laravel 5.2 is released!

Laravel 5.2 is now officially released and available to everyone. This release features multiple authentication driver support, implicit model binding, simplified Eloquent global scopes, opt-in authentication scaffolding, middleware groups, rate limiting middleware, array validation improvements, and more.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of these new features:

#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 can 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

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.

#Middleware Groups

Middleware groups allow you to group several route middleware under a single, convenient key, allowing you to assign several middleware to a route at once. For example, this can be useful when building a web UI and an API within the same application. You may group the session and CSRF routes into a web group, and perhaps the rate limiter in the api group.

#Rate Limiting

A new rate limiter middleware is now included with the framework, allowing you to easily limit the number of requests that a given IP address can make to a route over a specified number of minutes. For example, to limit a route to 60 requests every minute from a single IP address, you may do the following:

Route::get('/api/users', ['middleware' => 'throttle:60,1', function () {
    //
}]);

#Eloquent Global Scope

n previous versions of Laravel, global Eloquent scopes were complicated and error-prone to implement; however, in Laravel 5.2, global query scopes only require you to implement a single, simple method: apply.

For more information on writing global scopes, check out the full Eloquent documentation.