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Articles by Ashley Allen

Ashley is a freelance Laravel web developer who loves contributing to open-source projects and building exciting systems to help businesses succeed.

 

A guide to custom model casts in Laravel

Mutators. Accessors. Casts. What do all these terms mean? In this article, we'll dive into what they are and how to use them in your Laravel application. We'll also learn how to create and test your own custom Laravel casts and store objects in the database.

Working with images in Laravel using intervention/image

Working with images in Laravel web applications is a common task. In this article, we're going to take a look at how to use "intervention/image" to resize, rotate, crop, convert, and watermark images.

Architecture testing with Laravel Pest

Enforcing consistency across a codebase is tedious. Jump into this article to learn how to test your architecture with Laravel Pest.

Building Livewire Components with Volt

Learn how to use Volt to build Vue-like, single-file Livewire components for your Laravel projects.

A guide to Laravel pipelines

Laravel pipelines are a great way of breaking down complex workflows into smaller, manageable, and testable chunks. Learn about how Laravel uses them internally in the framework, and how to create your own.

The ultimate guide to Laravel caching

Caching is an essential tool for making web apps go fast. Laravel caching is easy to implement but difficult to get right. Jump in to learn how to implement caching using Laravel's built-in system, which supports multiple back-ends like Memcached and Redis.

Building a CLI with Laravel Prompts

Laravel Prompts makes building interactive CLI/Artisan commands a breeze. In this article, we'll build a simple GitHub CLI client in the command line using Prompts.

A guide to PHP attributes

Attributes are a powerful feature in PHP that can be used to add structured, machine-readable metadata to annotate your code. In this article, we'll look at what attributes are, how to use them, and how to create your own.

Sending email in Laravel with Mailgun

Sending email from a web app is a common feature. But what happens when you need to send an email to 5,000 recipients? In this article, we'll cover how to do this using Mailgun's "batch sending" feature.

Working with DynamoDB in Laravel

Seamlessly integrate the fast and scalable NoSQL database, DynamoDB, into your Laravel application. Learn how to optimize performance and implement advanced features in your app with DynamoDB.

Processes and Artisan commands in Laravel

Read about how to create and test commands to interact with your Laravel application and server. Discover new tips and tricks for writing your own Artisan commands, and how to use Laravel 10's Process facade.

Securing Laravel forms using Cloudflare's Turnstile CAPTCHA

Securing your web application's publicly accessible forms is important to prevent spam submissions and malicious attacks. This article covers how to use Cloudflare's Turnstile CAPTCHA solution to protect the forms in your Laravel applications.

A guide to feature flags in Laravel using Laravel Pennant

Read about how to use Laravel Pennant to add feature flags to your Laravel apps. We'll show you use cases for feature flags, the advantages and disadvantages, and how to write tests for your feature flag code.

A guide to soft deletes in Laravel

Soft deletes in Laravel can be really useful for building "recycle bin" features and for analytical purposes. But what are soft deletes? In this article, we dive into what they are, the pros and cons of using them, and how to use them in your Laravel app.

A guide to encryption and hashing in Laravel

Hashing and encryption are vital security concepts for every web developer to know. In this article, Ashley Allen shows us what hashing and encryption are, the difference between them, and how to use them in your Laravel applications.

A guide to using WebSockets in Laravel

WebSockets can be used to add real-time interactive experiences to your applications, but they can be confusing to get started with. In this article, we'll break down how to use WebSockets in your Laravel applications using Pusher.

Using the builder/manager pattern in Laravel

Discover the benefits of design patterns, how Laravel uses the manager pattern, and how you can use it too!

Working with Markdown in PHP

Markdown makes it easy to add syntax to your plaintext documents and convert it to HTML later. PHP has robust support for parsing and rendering markdown—consider this your go-to guide for working with markdown in PHP.

User permissions and roles in Laravel

You are authorized to access this article! Learn how to secure your Laravel application with simple roles and permissions.

A Guide To Error & Uptime Monitoring In Laravel Using Honeybadger

Every application has errors. It's how you respond to them that makes the difference. In this article, Ashley Allen shows us how to use Honeybadger to make sure your Laravel apps are performing as they should.

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