Building a Laravel form without Illuminate/html

Laravel 5 version got us confused by separating our beloved Form::open world into a separate package. Now you have to add “illuminate/html”: “~5.0” to your projects, whenever you want to use forms, right? Not necessary, you can survive without it.

How we would build a simple form with that package:

{!! Form::open(array('url' => 'admin/cities')) !!}
  City name:
  

  {!! Form::text('title', old('title')) !!}
  

  {!! Form::submit('Save') !!}
{!! Form::close() !!}

Now, how it looks if we build it in plain Laravel/HTML:

  {{ csrf_field() }}
  City name:
  

  
  

  Save

It’s not that bad, is it? The only thing we need to take differently is take care of CSRF protection, which is basically done with method csrf_field().

Another example would be a DELETE form – here we need to use two additional methods.

  {{ csrf_field() }}
  {{ method_field('DELETE') }}
  Delete

As you can see, function method_field() is used for adding a hidden field like this:

Then Laravel mechanism would point that form to the correct Controller method delete().

So, the question remains open: do we really need that external illuminate/html Form functionality? Not always. Probably, depends on your skills – which would give you faster results – and on your particular usage in your application.

Which one do you prefer? Do yo use that package? Tell your experience in comments.