Getting Started with Laravel 4 -- Table of Contents -- Getting Started with Laravel 4 -- Credits -- About the Author -- About the Reviewers -- www.PacktPub.com -- Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more -- Why Subscribe? -- Free Access for Packt account holders -- Preface -- What this book covers -- What you need for this book -- Who this book is for -- Conventions -- Reader feedback -- Customer support -- Downloading the example code -- Errata -- Piracy -- Questions -- 1. Meeting Laravel -- The need for frameworks -- The limitations of homemade tools -- Laravel to the rescue -- A new approach to developing PHP applications -- A more robust HTTP foundation -- Embracing PHP -- Laravel's main features and sources of inspiration -- Expressiveness and simplicity -- Prettifying PHP -- Responsibilities, naming, and conventions -- Helping you become a better developer -- Structure of a Laravel application -- The application container and request lifecycle -- Exploring Laravel -- Moving from Version 3 to Version 4 -- Summary -- 2. Composer All Over -- Working with the command line -- How does Composer work? -- Installation -- Unix (Mac OS, Linux) -- Windows -- Creating a new Laravel application -- Finding and installing new packages -- Additional advice -- Summary -- 3. Your First Application -- Sketching out the application -- Entities, relationships, and attributes -- The map of our application -- Starting the application -- Using the built-in development server -- Writing the first routes -- Restricting the route parameters -- Catching the missing routes -- Handling redirections -- Returning views -- Preparing the database -- Creating the Eloquent models -- Building the database schema -- Seeding the database -- Mastering Blade -- Creating a master view -- Back to the routes -- The overview page -- Displaying a cat's page.

Adding, editing, and deleting cats -- Summary -- 4. Authentication and Security -- Authenticating users -- Creating the user model -- Creating the necessary database schema -- Authentication routes and views -- Validating user input -- Securing your application -- Cross-site request forgery -- Escaping content to prevent cross-site scripting - XSS -- Avoiding SQL injection -- Using mass-assignment with care -- Cookies - secure by default -- Forcing HTTPS when exchanging sensitive data -- Summary -- 5. Testing - It's Easier Than You Think -- The benefits of testing -- The anatomy of a test -- Unit testing with PHPUnit -- Defining what you expect with assertions -- Preparing the scene and cleaning up objects -- Expecting exceptions -- Testing interdependent classes in isolation -- End-to-end testing -- Testing - batteries included -- Framework assertions -- Impersonating users -- Testing with a database -- Inspecting the rendered views -- Summary -- 6. A Command-line Companion Called Artisan -- Keeping up with the latest changes -- Inspecting and interacting with your application -- Fiddling with the internals -- Turning the engine off -- Fine-tuning your application -- Installing third-party commands -- Speeding up your workflow with generators -- Generating migrations -- Generating HTML forms -- Generating everything else -- Deploying with a single command -- Deployment, the old-school way -- Rolling out your own artisan commands -- Creating the command -- The anatomy of a command -- Writing the command -- Summary -- 7. Architecting Ambitious Applications -- Moving from simple routing to powerful controllers -- Favoring explicit routing -- Straightforward REST routing -- Supercharging your models -- Simple performance tricks -- Eager loading records -- Selecting only what you need -- Profiling your queries -- Foolproof models with soft deletes.

More control with SQL -- Listening for model events -- The handy paginator class -- Environment configuration made easy -- Environments and Artisan -- Adding your own configuration settings -- Bringing in your own classes -- Playing nice with the frontend -- Summary -- A. An Arsenal of Tools -- Array helpers -- The usage examples of array helpers -- String and text manipulation -- Boolean functions -- Transformation functions -- Inflection functions -- Dealing with files -- File uploads -- File manipulation methods -- Sending e-mails -- Easier date and time handling with Carbon -- Instantiating Carbon objects -- Outputting user-friendly timestamps -- Boolean methods -- Carbon for Eloquent DateTime properties -- Don't wait any longer with queues -- Creating a job and pushing it onto the queue -- Listening to a queue and executing jobs -- Getting notified when a job fails -- Queues without background processes -- Where to go next? -- Index.