laravel4cookbook

Packages
Packages are the recommended way of extending the functionality provided by Laravel 4. They’re
nothing more than Composer libraries with some particular bootstrapping code.
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The code for this chapter can be found at: https://github.com/formativ/tutorial-laravel-4-
packages
This chapter follows on from a previous chapter which covered the basics of creating a deployment
process for your applications. It goes into detail about creating a Laravel 4 installation; so you should
be familiar with it before spending a great deal of time in this one. You’ll also find the source-code
we created there to be a good basis for understanding the source code of this chapter.
I learned the really technical bits of this chapter from reading Taylor’s book. If you take away just
one thing from this it should be to get and read it.
Composer
While the previous chapter shows you how to create a Laravel 4 project; we need to do a bit more
work in this area if we are to understand one of the fundamental ways in which packages differ
from application code.
Laravel 3 had the concept of bundles; which were downloadable folders of source code. Laravel
4 extends this idea, but instead of rolling its own download process, it makes use of Composer.
Composer should not only be used to create new Laravel 4 installations; but also as a means of
adding packages to existing Laravel 4 applications.
Laravel 4 packages are essentially the same things as normal Composer libraries. They often utilise
functionality built into the Laravel 4 framework, but this isn’t a requirement of packages in general.
It follows that the end result of our work today is a stand-alone Composer library including the
various deployment tools we created last time. For now, we will be placing the package code inside
our application folder to speed up iteration time.
Dependency Injection
One of the darlings of modern PHP development is Dependency Injection. PHP developers have
recently grown fond of unit testing and class decoupling. I’ll explain both of these things shortly;
but it’s important to know that they are greatly improved by the use of dependency injection.