Plug and Play Avatars in Laravel with Laravolt

The Laravolt Avatar by Bayu Hendra Winata is a package that turns strings like names into avatars effortlessly. This package uses the Intervention Image package under the hood to generate base64 images on-the-fly, saving as an image, and SVG. Learn more about this package and how you can use it in your Laravel projects to generate avatars for your users.

PHP in 2018

PHP in 2018 is a talk by PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf, which focuses on new features in PHP 7.2 and 7.3. We have some exciting low-level performance wins coming to PHP 7.3, which should be out late 2018. It’s highly encouraging that PHP’s focus is mainly on performance in the PHP 7.x releases.

Laravel View Components Package

We featured View Components in Laravel, written by Jeff Ochoa, as an alternative approach to View Composers.

Inspired by Jeff’s article, Sebastian De Deyne of Spatie created a Laravel package that brings the concept of a View Component to Laravel applications. The package headline is: “A better way to connect data with view rendering in Laravel.” Learn about this package and how to start using view components in your Laravel projects.

A Stand-Alone Laravel Slack Package

The gpressutto5/laravel-slack composer package is a Slack notification library for Laravel 5.5 by Guilherme Pressutto. The package describes itself as “Slack notification for Laravel as it should be. Easy, fast, simple and highly testable.” Learn more about how to use this in your Laravel application for a quick and easy way to add Slack notifications to your Laravel >=5.5 app.

Convert your Bootstrap CSS to Tailwind with Tailwindo

Tailwindo automatically converts Bootstrap component classes to Tailwind utility classes. Now it’s easier than ever to switch from Bootstrap to Tailwind.

May 2018 Git Security Vulnerability

Upgrade Git to address CVE 2018-11235 which is a new industry-wide security vulnerability in Git that can lead to arbitrary code execution when a user operates in a malicious repository.

Working with Mutable and Immutable DateTime in PHP

Mutable dates can be the source of confusion and unexpected bugs in your code. My goal isn’t to tell you that DateTime is evil because it’s mutable, but to consider the tradeoffs and benefits of using mutable versus immutable DateTime objects. Until recently, I wasn’t even aware that PHP offers a counterpart to the DateTime class: DateTimeImmutable. Come along and learn the basics of working with mutable and immutable DateTime instances in PHP.

Use Laravel GeoIP to Determine Users’ Geographical Location

I recently needed a geographical check of users to determine default locales and currencies of users. The torann/geoip package by Daniel Stainback fit the bill nicely to provide GeoIP for Laravel 5 applications.

Win $1500 in the first Laravel Blog Writing Contest

Taylor Otwell is hosting a contest for the “most helpful/insightful/useful” Laravel blog post written by a community member. The grand prize for the winner is **$1,500 cash** delivered via PayPal.

GitHub Releases Desktop App Version 1.2

A brand-new release of the GitHub Desktop app just shipped yesterday that will help you more easily sync up your changes with coworkers and teammates. Learn more about the latest release of the Electron-based GitHub desktop app.