Servage Magazine

Laravel 5.3 was released in not too long ago, and is a minor release which introduces some new features in a backward-compatible manner. The new version introduces an extended notification system, support for real-time applications and some smaller changes such as updates to default routes.

Laravel Notifications

A typical way of notifying a user or customer in a web application is by using either a custom notification system on the website or by email. Laravel supports both of these already, but version 5.3 adds some new ways to notify users.

You can for example send a text message or notify a Slack channel about what is happening in your application. Here is a more practical example: when an invoice is due in two weeks, you send an email. If the customer has not paid the invoice and there is only 3 days of time left, you can send a high-priority notification by SMS. Laravel uses Nexmo for the SMS sending functionality and more SMS providers are available at laravel-notification-channels.com. You can find integrations with many other services such as Twitter, Pushbullet and Trello on the same website.

Laravel Echo

Echo is a new event broadcasting feature. Echo provides a real-time means of keeping client-side applications updated when something inside a Laravel application changes. It uses WebSockets for the implementation and currently supports Pusher and Socket.IO libraries.

If you are not familiar with WebSockets, it is a protocol that allows a web server and client to communicate in real-time, without having to reload a web page to communicate. Other advantages of WebSockets include low latency and low data transfer usage.

Laravel Passport

Laravel Passport aims to make API authentication simple by using OAuth2 implementation. Passport allows you to generate OAuth2 authorization codes that serve as access codes for your application. If you have an API for your application, you can protect the API routes with Passport.

If you intend to take advantage of this new way of protecting your API, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the concepts of OAuth2 first. OAuth2 can be confusing at first, but Laravel Passport attempts to make the implementation of OAuth2 much easier.

Updates to Routes

When you download a fresh Laravel 5.3, one of the first things you will notice is the absence of the app/Http/routes.php file. But don’t worryㅡit has not gone far. The routes have been split into two separate files: web routes and API routes. From now on, all routes live in a directory called “routes” in the root directory of a Laravel project.