Learning Laravel Loosely

XenWord is a simple bridge between WordPress and XenForo. it’s simple. The PHP code is finally taking shape after working on the plugin over the last three years.

There are still issues that need to be fixed and many new features that need to be included in XenWord. However, my knowledge has been focused on learning the WordPress way of doing coding. There are times this is frustrating when a new WordPress release deprecates a function.

Regardless, creating XenWord was a nice starting point for learning the basics of PHP. The idea has always been to branch out into other types of uses for PHP.

XenForo has a nice structure but my knowledge just isn’t good enough to build add-ons. I’ve tried with simple things but it takes a long time. In fact, my desire has always been to extend XenWord so that it writes templates to XenForo. Routing is a big issue and so I’ve been slow to work through the issues.

When I wanted to learn PHP, many people suggested to me that I learn a PHP Framework. I worked through an application in CodeIgniter fairly quickly. It was an RSS aggregator (Research Notes) but the coding didn’t feel comfortable. My knowledge was also lacking and the coding was more cut and paste. I left Cowboy Coding way behind after learning how to use PHPStorm for projects.

Things changed this weekend after watching many videos in Laracasts. I jumped into installing the Laravel framework at 11 pm on Sunday night. Within two hours, I had things up in running and understood the basic ideas of routes and views. Passing variables was something that blew my mind, therefore, I went to bed.  Upon waking, I did the exact same setup with an older version of Laravel on CodeAnywhere in 5 minutes. Click.

The reason the Laravel installation took a long time on my Mac was that the Laravel instructions kept failing with an https error. Worse, the Laravel installation instructions on the Laracasts were also different from the latest instructions on the website. After fussing awhile, I moved to installing homebrew, which allowed me to install Composer, which allowed me to install Laravel. A final hicup was getting the $PATH set properly.

I spent more time on Monday night watching Laracasts videos and playing with Laravel. By evening, the authentication was working properly (9 pm) and by 11 pm I understood controllers. In fact, I eagerly woke up this morning and changed out the routes anonymous functions into routes.

The video below is a mess, with loud mouse clicks and lots of ums. A passing car can also be heard. Regardless, you get the idea.

It’s fun !