Introduction
Packages are the primary way of adding functionality to Laravel. Packages might be anything from a great way to work with dates like Carbon, or an entire BDD testing framework like Behat.
Of course, there are different types of packages. Some packages are stand-alone, meaning they work with any framework, not just Laravel. Both Carbon and Behat are examples of stand-alone packages. Any of these packages may be used with Laravel by simply requesting them in your composer.json
file.
On the other hand, other packages are specifically intended for use with Laravel. These packages may have routes, controllers, views, and configuration specifically intended to enhance a Laravel application. This guide primarily covers the development of those packages that are Laravel specific.
Service Providers
Service providers are the connection points between your package and Laravel. A service provider is responsible for binding things into Laravel's service container and informing Laravel where to load package resources such as views, configuration, and localization files.
A service provider extends the Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider
class and contains two methods: register
and boot
. The base ServiceProvider
class is located in the illuminate/support
Composer package, which you should add to your own package's dependencies.
To learn more about the structure and purpose of service providers, check out their documentation.
Routing
To define routes for your package, simply require
the routes file from within your package service provider's boot
method. From within your routes file, you may use the Route
facade to register routes just as you would within a typical Laravel application:
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
if (! $this->app->routesAreCached()) {
require __DIR__.'/../../routes.php';
}
}
Resources
Views
To register your package's views with Laravel, you need to tell Laravel where the views are located. You may do this using the service provider's loadViewsFrom
method. The loadViewsFrom
method accepts two arguments: the path to your view templates and your package's name. For example, if your package name is "courier", add the following to your service provider's boot
method:
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->loadViewsFrom(__DIR__.'/path/to/views', 'courier');
}
Package views are referenced using a double-colon package::view
syntax. So, you may load the admin
view from the courier
package like so:
Route::get('admin', function () {
return view('courier::admin');
});
Overriding Package Views
When you use the loadViewsFrom
method, Laravel actually registers two locations for your views: one in the application's resources/views/vendor
directory and one in the directory you specify. So, using our courier
example: when requesting a package view, Laravel will first check if a custom version of the view has been provided by the developer in resources/views/vendor/courier
. Then, if the view has not been customized, Laravel will search the package view directory you specified in your call to loadViewsFrom
. This makes it easy for end-users to customize / override your package's views.
Publishing Views
If you would like to make your views available for publishing to the application's resources/views/vendor
directory, you may use the service provider's publishes
method. The publishes
method accepts an array of package view paths and their corresponding publish locations.
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->loadViewsFrom(__DIR__.'/path/to/views', 'courier');
$this->publishes([
__DIR__.'/path/to/views' => resource_path('views/vendor/courier'),
]);
}
Now, when users of your package execute Laravel's vendor:publish
Artisan command, your package's views will be copied to the specified location.
Translations
If your package contains translation files, you may use the loadTranslationsFrom
method to inform Laravel how to load them. For example, if your package is named "courier", you should add the following to your service provider's boot
method:
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->loadTranslationsFrom(__DIR__.'/path/to/translations', 'courier');
}
Package translations are referenced using a double-colon package::file.line
syntax. So, you may load the courier
package's welcome
line from the messages
file like so:
echo trans('courier::messages.welcome');
Publishing Translations
If you would like to publish your package's translations to the application's resources/lang/vendor
directory, you may use the service provider's publishes
method. The publishes
method accepts an array of package paths and their corresponding publish locations. For example, to publish the translation files for our example courier
package:
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->loadTranslationsFrom(__DIR__.'/path/to/translations', 'courier');
$this->publishes([
__DIR__.'/path/to/translations' => resource_path('lang/vendor/courier'),
]);
}
Now, when users of your package execute Laravel's vendor:publish
Artisan command, your package's translations will be published to the specified location.
Configuration
Typically, you will want to publish your package's configuration file to the application's own config
directory. This will allow users of your package to easily override your default configuration options. To publish a configuration file, just use the publishes
method from the boot
method of your service provider:
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->publishes([
__DIR__.'/path/to/config/courier.php' => config_path('courier.php'),
]);
}
Now, when users of your package execute Laravel's vendor:publish
command, your file will be copied to the specified location. Of course, once your configuration has been published, it can be accessed like any other configuration file:
$value = config('courier.option');
Default Package Configuration
You may also choose to merge your own package configuration file with the application's copy. This allows your users to include only the options they actually want to override in the published copy of the configuration. To merge the configurations, use the mergeConfigFrom
method within your service provider's register
method:
/**
* Register bindings in the container.
*
* @return void
*/
public function register()
{
$this->mergeConfigFrom(
__DIR__.'/path/to/config/courier.php', 'courier'
);
}
Public Assets
Your packages may have assets such as JavaScript, CSS, and images. To publish these assets to the application's public
directory, use the service provider's publishes
method. In this example, we will also add a public
asset group tag, which may be used to publish groups of related assets:
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->publishes([
__DIR__.'/path/to/assets' => public_path('vendor/courier'),
], 'public');
}
Now, when your package's users execute the vendor:publish
command, your assets will be copied to the specified location. Since you typically will need to overwrite the assets every time the package is updated, you may use the --force
flag:
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=public --force
If you would like to make sure your public assets are always up-to-date, you can add this command to the post-update-cmd
list in your composer.json
file.
Publishing File Groups
You may want to publish groups of package assets and resources separately. For instance, you might want your users to be able to publish your package's configuration files without being forced to publish your package's assets at the same time. You may do this by "tagging" them when calling the publishes
method. For example, let's define two publish groups in the boot
method of a package service provider:
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
$this->publishes([
__DIR__.'/../config/package.php' => config_path('package.php')
], 'config');
$this->publishes([
__DIR__.'/../database/migrations/' => database_path('migrations')
], 'migrations');
}
Now your users may publish these groups separately by referencing their tag name when using the vendor:publish
Artisan command:
php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Vendor\Providers\PackageServiceProvider" --tag="config"