How to Structure Laravel 12 Projects

About this course

Structuring Laravel projects is one of the most typical questions I see in the community. The reason is that, for better or worse, Laravel has many options to do that!

Services?
Actions?
Jobs?
Observers?
Mutators?
Events/listeners?
Traits?
Helpers?
Modules?
Components?
Packages?

In this course, I will provide an overview of the main options with real-life examples from open-source projects.

We will discuss:

Where to offload logic from the Controller to make it shorter
How to structure admin/user areas
Is it worth dividing the app into modules
When is it time to create re-usable packages
... and more

As a practical example, we will try to shorten this Controller method:

public function store(Request $request)  
{  
    $this->authorize('user_create');  
  
    $userData = $request->validate([  
        'name' => 'required',  
        'email' => 'required|unique:users',  
        'password' => 'required',  
    ]);  
  
    $userData['start_at'] = Carbon::createFromFormat('m/d/Y', $request->start_at)->format('Y-m-d');  
    $userData['password'] = bcrypt($request->password);  
  
    $user = User::create($userData);  
    $user->roles()->sync($request->input('roles', []));  
  
    Project::create([  
        'user_id' => $user->id,  
        'name' => 'Demo project 1',  
    ]);
    Category::create([  
        'user_id' => $user->id,  
        'name' => 'Demo category 1',  
    ]);
    Category::create([  
        'user_id' => $user->id,  
        'name' => 'Demo category 2',  
    ]);  
  
    MonthlyReport::where('month', now()->format('Y-m'))->increment('users_count');  
    $user->sendEmailVerificationNotification();  
  
    $admins = User::where('is_admin', 1)->get();  
    Notification::send($admins, new AdminNewUserNotification($user));  
  
    return response()->json([  
        'result' => 'success',  
        'data' => $user,  
    ], 200);  
}

For more complex topics, I intentionally used the word overview above. This course aims to show you the options, but each option is a "rabbit hole," often requiring an entirely separate course on that specific pattern.

So, at the end of the course, you will see a lesson with extra links to other resources from myself and the community if you choose to dive deeper into some structure topics.

A few testimonials from students:

Now, let's start our journey with the lesson Validation to Form Request.