A look at what’s coming to Laravel 5.3

Laravel 5.3 is now released and available for everyone. Here is a quick look at some of these new features:

#Laravel Scout

Laravel Scout is a driver based full-text search for Eloquent. Out of the box, it supports Algolia and because it’s driver based anyone in the community can create their own integration with other full-text search systems.

Scout works by implementing a “Searchable” trait with your existing models. Then it’s just a matter of syncing the data with the search service like this:

php artisan scout:import App\\Post

After that you can search your models with:

Post::search('Alice')->get();

You can even paginate:

Post::search('Alice')->paginate()

And it even includes simple where clauses:

Post::search(‘Alice’)—>where('acount_id', '>', 1)->paginate()

#Laravel Mailable

Laravel Mailable is a new Mail class for sending emails in an expressive way:

Mail::to('laravel@example.com')->send(new OrderComplete);

Of course you can use all the other mail features as well:

Mail::to('laravel@example.com')->cc('john@example.com')->queue(new OrderComplete);

#Laravel Notifications

Laravel Notifications allow you to make quick updates through services like Slack, SMS, or Email.

Notifications ship with a responsive transactional email template. In your notification class all that is needed to send a message is code like this:

$this->line('Thank you for joining')
    ->action('Button Text', 'http://url.com')
    ->line('If you have any questions please hit reply')
    ->success()

Or if it’s an error:

$this->line('Sorry we had a problem with your order')
    ->action('Button Text', 'http://url.com')
    ->error()

#Laravel Passport

Laravel Passport is an optional package that is a full oAuth 2 server ready to go.

You can set your scopes, Vue.js components for token generation, revoking tokens, and more.

#Rollback one migration

A new feature added to migrations that allow you to rollback just one migration instead of the whole batch:

php artisan migrate:rollback --step=1

#Blade Foreach Loops

Inside Blade foreach loops it now gives you access to a $loop variable. This will allow you to do things like this:

@if($loop->first)
    Do something on the first iteration.
@endif
 
@if($loop->last)
    Do something on the last iteration.
@endif

#Eloquent Collections are cleanly serialized and re-pulled by queued jobs:

In 5.3, Eloquent collections are cleanly serialized and re-pulled by queued jobs, just like individual models are! pic.twitter.com/IZ5t118WNT

— Laravel (@laravelphp) May 31, 2016

Jacob Bennett tells us why this matters.

#Queue console output changed to show the actual class names:

Cleaning Laravel queue console output so it shows actual class names instead of "CallQueuedHandler" for every job. ???? pic.twitter.com/iYKAhTHaeU

— Taylor Otwell (@taylorotwell) June 1, 2016

#Ability to customize simple pagination

Today in Laravel 5.3 development. Bringing back simple pagination customization via views. ???? pic.twitter.com/Ir28svVGCA

— Taylor Otwell (@taylorotwell) June 1, 2016

#First Or Create

Now firstOrCreate allows additional values to be passed to it. Example:

return User::firstOrCreate(['github_id', $githubUser->id], ['avatar' => $githubUser->avatar]);

#Query Builder will now return a Collection

Query builder previously always returned arrays and now it’s going to change to return a collection. This will keep results the same no matter how you pull out the data out:

$collection = DB::table('posts')->get();

#Multiple Migration Paths

Now you can load your own migration paths from a service provider:

$this->loadMigrationsFrom('path/to/migrations/folder')

For more on, Alex Bowers has an overview.

#Laravel Echo

Laravel Echo is a new feature designed to be an improvement over the current event broadcasting system. See the Laracasts video for more information.

#New Cache Helper

The cache() global helper can perform three primary functions: get, put, or return an instance of the backing service. For more details checkout Matt Stauffer’s write up.

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The list only covers some of the big changes, but Laravel 5.3 is shaping up to be a nice release and will be officially announced at Laracon. Be sure and join the Laravel newsletter to get notified as soon as 5.3 is officially released.