Following the storing of paths in the Container/Application instance, we see a bit of logic to work out where the application bootstrapping file is. Another bootstrapping file. One from the same folder as the Application.php class file:

$framework = $app['path.base'].

'/vendor/laravel/framework/src';



require $framework.'/Illuminate/Foundation/start.php';

These come from bootstrap/start.php

This seems a little redundant considering the getBoostrapFile() method, defined on the Application class:

public static function getBootstrapFile()

{

return __DIR__.'/start.php';

}

These come from vendor/laravel/framework/src/

Illuminate/Foundation/Application.php

Mcrypt

Still, this file is mostly procedural code (needed to get the application running). Let’s take a look:

if ( ! extension_loaded('mcrypt'))

{

echo 'Mcrypt PHP extension required.'.PHP_EOL;



exit(1);

}

This comes from vendor/laravel/framework/src/

Illuminate/Foundation/start.php

Aside from turning default error reporting off, this new bootstrap file ensures that the Mcrypt PHP module is loaded. The Mcrypt module helps Laravel to hash and encrypt various data points throughout the system. These kinds of libraries take loads of work to make well, and Laravel uses encryption and hashing a lot.

Some of the ways Laravel uses encryption are with cookies/sessions and queue messages. Some of the ways Laravel uses hashes are with password salting and authentication remember tokens. We’ll look at all of these later!

Facade Testing

Something strange happens next…

$app->instance('app', $app);

This comes from vendor/laravel/framework/src/

Illuminate/Foundation/start.php

The comment explains this as needed to facade test the application. I couldn’t find a case of this being done in the Laravel test suite, but the idea is sound.

Assuming Foo was implemented like this…

class Foo

{

public function getBar()

{

return App::make("bar");

}

}

…you could effectively test that the call to the App::make() method was made, and that the value was returned:

$app = Mockery::mock("stdClass");

$app->shouldReceive("make")->andReturn("mocked make");



App::swap($app);



$foo = new Foo();



$this->assertEquals("mocked make", $foo->getBar());

The usefulness of such a test is debatable. The example demonstrates that it can be done, not that it should be.

Following that, the following code can be found:

if (isset($unitTesting))

{

$app['env'] = $env = $testEnvironment;

}

This comes from vendor/laravel/framework/src/

Illuminate/Foundation/start.php

This is completely out of context unless we also look at the detail TestCase class, which ships with Laravel:

public function createApplication()

{

$unitTesting = true;



$testEnvironment = 'testing';



return require __DIR__.'/../../bootstrap/start.php';

}

This comes from app/tests/TestCase.php

The code (in vendor/…/start.php) is entirely for the benefit the TestCase class. It is there to set the environment of the application to testing so that the configuration files in app/config/testing will be used in addition to the global configuration files.

Facades

The code, after that, is about facades:

Facade::clearResolvedInstances();



Facade::setFacadeApplication($app);

This comes from vendor/laravel/framework/src/

Illuminate/Foundation/start.php

Facade, in Laravel, is a term used to refer to static-like classes which proxy to regular classes. We’ve already seen one of these in the form of App. The App facade invokes methods on an instance of Illuminate\Foundation\Application. It’s just shorter to type App than it is to toe the fully qualified class name.

The use of the word Facade is a highly contentious issue. I have no desire to talk about it. If you know the history of the discussion, please refrain from brining it up. If you don’t, you’re probably better off…

The methods look like this:

public static function clearResolvedInstance($name)

{

unset(static::$resolvedInstance[$name]);

} public static function setFacadeApplication($app)

{

static::$app = $app;

}

These are from vendor/laravel/framework/src/

Illuminate/Support/Facade/Facade.php

The Facade class is the base class for all of the facades which ship with Laravel. It has a protected, static array of facade instances matched to keys of the Container.

Registering a facade is a two-step process. A service provider will add a resolver (either via the bind() method or the instance() method). A Facade class will then define a method which pulls a class instance out of the Container. We’ll see how this is done later.

The first method clears this array of resolved instances out. The second sets a reference to the Application on the Facade class…