Laravel, the open source PHP framework for web development, is aimed at making the development process easy by simplifying methods to carry out common activities such as authentication, caching etc.

The introduction of Laravel version 5.0 managed to create a new wave of excitement among the developers due to its exciting features like inbuilt authentication system and multiple file support facility etc.

So, the entire community is looking forward to the release of latest Laravel version 6, a new team member in Laravel framework family!

we will discuss some of the new features and updates that are available for everyone now.

Stay tuned!

Laravel 6.0 is the new LTS

With the release of Laravel 6.0, it marks the new LTS version of Laravel with bugfixes until September 3rd, 2021 and security fixes until September 3rd 2022. Previous version of Laravel 5.5 had security fixes until August 30th, 2020. You can check out the updates table with versions and dates of the Laravel latest versions.

Semantic Versioning

From this Laravel 6.0 and upcoming Laravel versions, semantic Versioning will go forward as per the release notes published by the Laravel team.

Semantic Versioning is a system that has been popular over the last few years. The main goal of the semantic Versioning system is to keep a track of rapidly moving software release targets. In the semantic Versioning system, a 3 component number in the format of X-Y-Z is given to the software version where X is a major version, Y is a minor version and Z is for a patch.

Here, the Laravel press note has to say about Laravel 6.0 with semantic Versioning.

Improved Authorization Responses

If you are a Laravel developer, you must know about how difficult it was to provide custom error messages to end users about authorization. Well, it is not a headache anymore as the Laravel 6.0 introduces a Gate::inspect method that enables the system to offer the authorization policy's realise:

Job Middleware

Facilitated by Taylor Otwell, Job Middleware is a feature that allows jobs to run through Middleware. It helps you avoid custom logic in the body of your job's handle() method.

Lazy Collections

You should thank the Laravel team for introducing this feature, especially when you are working with large datasets. It will be a trendsetter feature for all Laravel developers. It also works with eloquent model collections and allows developers to keep the memory low while working with large datasets. Say thanks to a new class IlluminateSupportLazyCollection for that.

For example, when you have a dataset of multi-gigabyte to process for some operations and to parse the logs. Here, with Lazy Collections, the system does not need to read the entire file into memory at once, but to keep a small part of the file in memory at a given time.

If you want to create a Lazy Collections, you need to pass a PHP generator function to the collection's make method.

Eloquent Subquery Enhancements

One of the best ways to reduce the amount of memory the application uses, is to push more work to the database layer in Laravel applications. It also will reduce the number of database queries we make and also reduces the amount of time to process our models by eloquent. The best way to push more work to database layers is to generate subqueries that allow you to generate and run nested queries within other database queries. On the other hand, you can also use subqueries in order by statements, where statements and other clauses. Some of the queries are "Select" subqueries, "Order By" subqueries and "From" subqueries. You can know more about Eloquent Subquery Enhancements in Laravel 6.0 here.

Laravel UI

The Laravel 5.x had the fronthead Scaffolding and with Laravel 6.0, it has been extracted into a separate Laravel/UI Composer package. Now, you can iterate first party UI scaffolding on separate primary framework.

Laravel Spark

Laravel Spark 6.0 is the latest amazing version of Laravel. It has come with a set of attractive features such as per seat pricing, location and bootstrapping and a new user interface. Moreover, Laravel 6.0 also includes some enhanced security features that will take Laravel development to the next level.

Laravel Spark 6.0 Features

The Laravel 6.0 features are considered to be a huge benefit. Let’s understand them in brief!

Per Seat Pricing

The latest version has come up with an exciting new feature with per seat pricing facility that was not seen in the earlier versions such as laravel 5.7 or laravel 5.8. Due to this feature, users and teams will benefit independently in terms of hours of usage record.

Not only will Laravel Spark enable developers to charge users/team members but they will also be able to charge on the basis of projects developed. Now, that the billing is taken care of, developers can focus on bringing the application to a logical conclusion.

Localization

It can be considered a very useful feature for Laravel 6.0 users who want to translate their Spark based applications in their preferred local language. Furthermore, it also supports right to left text layouts.

Bootstrap 4 Release & A Beautiful UI

The latest release is built on Bootstrap 4.0, the latest version of Bootstrap CSS framework. With its help a user can get an excellent starting point to build a beautiful UI. Now, Stripe elements can help you collect the payment details also carry out online transactions with almost no possibility of fraud or mal-practice.

Admin Panel

The presence of Laravel admin panel will help in developing web applications at a much quicker rate. The admin panel will assist you in controlling data and permissions assigned with no requirement of coding, thus, giving developers increased flexibility to focus on how to represent the data rather than just handling it.

Laravel spark has the same pricing as its previous releases. To help users easily identify the various versions of Laravel Spark, each upgrade will be given a new code name.

Some Additional Advantages of Laravel Spark 6.0

Here is a list of some additional advantages that has come with the release of latest version along with its features:

It will allow the Laravel developers to upgrade applications developed in the previous versions of Laravel. It will keep your Spark installation updated at all times.

Applications developed with Laravel Spark 6.0 can be tailor made as per the app users liking with minimum coding.

It will enable you to maintain a connection with customers at all times by allowing the developers to make announcements to their customers and making sure that they are updated all the time.

Now, that you know everything about the release of version 6.0 and the changes that it will bring, let’s talk about another important announcement by Taylor Otwell on Laravel Vapor.

What is Laravel Vapor?

We will quote the words of Taylor Otwell to explain, “ Laravel Vapor is a serverless deployment platform for Laravel, powered by AWS. Launch your Laravel infrastructure on Vapor and fall in love with the scalable simplicity of serverless”.

Important Things to Know about Laravel Vapor

You need Laravel 5.8

Make use of ‘asset()’ function to implement the assets

If you are new to AWS or you have an account with increased limits in regions like EU, then you need to increase your Certificate Manager Limits in us-east-1 as soon as possible.

Advantages of Laravel Vapor

Otwell’s demo portrayed that Vapor can handle over half a million requests with an average response time of 12 minutes.

As it is built around teams, you can create as many teams as you need by paying for a single plan.

It will give you control over what each team member can do across all the resources managed by Vapor.

Vapor will provide you with an accessible staging domain that Otwell calls “vanity URL”. It will enable you to immediately access your application with a domain that you can share with your colleagues until you are assigned a custom domain.

Vapor will provide you with environment metrics that give an overview of the application environment. The metrics include how many HTTP requests the application got in the last 24 hours, number of CLI invocations, average duration of CLI invocations and how much these cost on lambda etc.

You can search and review your recent logs right from the Vapor UI. It also auto updates when there is a new entry in the log.

There are two types of database in Vapor - fixed size and serverless. In fixed size database you need to choose specifications such as RAM, VCPU etc. While in serverless you don't have to choose any specifications.

Conclusion

The latest version of Laravel has continued to create a flutter among the community due to its incredible set of features. Also, Laravel has a constant community support so we can safely say that the future of this exciting framework definitely looks bright!