Updated July 6, 2023
Introduction to Laravel Collective
Laravel Collective is an html component used to build view elements instead of simple html tags. It is used to make html forms with the help of shortcodes. By default, Html codes require a lot of time to be produced. If you need to create a website with a lot of elements like text boxes, checkbox fields, text area, and drop-down lists, writing raw HTML code in a single blade together with blade syntax may end up consuming a lot of time for the developer when it is possible to make it happen in less time. Laravel Collective is a complete package, and it can be easily integrated with any project of laravel 5.0. It is one of the popular names in the market and is surely a very good template engine. It has got ample benefits to be used for many purposes.
What is Laravel Collective?
It is a special set of elements that can be used for HTML forms. Some examples of elements are checkboxes, radio buttons, labels, etc. It also has a command bus, remote SSH, and annotations for other specific purposes. When you open any form, it allows you to give it a route. The blade defines the action and the method it uses on the given route.
With the help of the blade, you can easily create view composers and macros. If you need to write a multilingual application, blade, and laravel come with the necessary facilities and methods you will require to achieve your task. All the resources of the Laravel collective are accessible through github, for which the link you can find on the website. The latest version available is Laravel Collective v6.03. You must install and deploy the Laravel framework appropriately to get Laravel Collective working.
It does the rendering and processing work of the submitted content into HTML Form tags to code the elements one may need. When Laravel 5 was introduced into the market, some components were excluded from the core Framework of Laravel and were dedicated to the hand of Laravel Collective. One of the primary additions to the Laravel Collective was the Forms and HTML library. According to some experts, working on form buildings may not be necessary since it’s considered irrelevant. Many companies and businesses worldwide frequently use this product despite its popularity.
Collectives in Laravel Collective
Writing code with Laravel Collective is less painful than using direct HTML for any task. Also, the form facade makes selecting fields very less painstaking. The main Laravel framework did not initially include the packages in Laravel Collective.
1. laravelcollective/annotations: These help to use annotations in the PHP docblocks for further processing.
2. laravelcollective/html: These help deliver HTML Form and HTML conveniences with the help of HTML builder and Form builder.
3. laravelcollective/remote: It permits SSH into the remote servers and runs the particular command with the help of the SSH facade.
4. laravelcollective/iron-queue: It ensures that IronMQ support for the Laravel queue exists.
5. laravelcollective/bus: It ensures the delivery of functionality of the Laravel Command Bus.
How to install a particular package?
Let us look at how to install a particular package. If you want to install the laravelcollective/html package, follow these steps:
- You must install the package by running the composer command in the project directory.
- Add the new provider to the particular provider’s array of config/app.php
- You need to then add two class aliases to the aliases array of config/app.php
Now you can use the form and html helper as per your interest. There are sample usages available in form helper to assist you in creating a form with the help of the Laravel collective, a laravelcollective/html package. Form model binding is one of the important works people do with this resource’s help. The person who used to maintain Laravel Collective, the team behind Laravel, has stopped maintaining it. This has caused numerous glitches and delays in updates, hindering its effectiveness when needed.
Also, many people claim that it is unnecessary as many other alternate options are available in the market. Also, the popular claim is that if the particular form you are creating is simple, with very few components, then it makes sense to use it. If a few elements in your form are identical, then using the Laravel Collective will be beneficial. The form builder makes things easier. Similarly, like how we saw the installation of the html package, you can install all the other packages available in the Laravel Collective, which can be used for your different purposes.
You should attend to various technical tasks that require attention using the remaining packages. The main purpose of introducing this was to make sure that it makes coding html content convenient and easier for all those involved in the work. Though there are opinions in support of it and not in support of it, one can never conclude unless one uses it. Therefore it is important first to use it and realize if it is helping or not helping in any way. Some also complain that the final outcome of the coding with the help of Laravel Collective does not define the errors, and therefore it becomes a complication to identify and understand the errors and work on them to ensure everything is fine in the end.
Conclusion
People widely use this method to simplify detailed HTML coding, and it has been available in the market for quite some time now. Many specialists have analyzed it and have made various conclusions based on their timely observations. Some people have benefitted with time and effort from using Laravel Collective. Others find it not helpful as they claim that it has major limitations in its complete processing, which can lag the completion of the given work in time. Therefore, it is difficult to credit or discredit it unless one uses it.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to Laravel Collective. Here we discuss the basic concept, how to install a particular package, and the Collectives included in Laravel Collective. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –