Laravel: Up and Running: A Framework for Building Modern PHP Apps 1st Edition

Laravel Up & Running is absolutely the book I’d recommend to anyone interested in learning Laravel. It takes you from the very beginning of installing Laravel all the way to the really cool features that are more optional to implement on any given project.On each page we gain an increased understanding of the challenges faced by programmers that Laravel addresses as well as best practices for using the framework. With Matt as our expert guide we learn of the clean syntax and default protections we’re given by Blade. Eloquent’s role in helping us interact with databases is clearly explained. Dealing with the container and the concept of dependency injection is made clear.I appreciate that at the end of each chapter Matt includes a section entitled “Testing.” He’s giving the reader some insight into how a professional assures that the code he implemented continues to produce expected results even after making many changes in the future. The exposure to these concepts early in the book, introduced in conjunction with material appropriate for the tests helps to ease one into the testing mindset.In short, Laravel is a super powerful framework that has best practices built into it by default. To get the benefits of Laravel there’s going to be a learning curve. The author provides us with a resource to make the process as painless as possible. It’s not an intro to programming book. It’s an introduction to Laravel book. If you want to take the step from hacked together PHP code to a more professional approach, this is the book for you.

Most of the explanations in thia book are very good, detailed and straightforward. That's why I recommend this book. Few things were missing, like what should be put in a model and what should be put in a controller, little explanations about MVC generally etc. Some things like elixir are out-dated.

I consider myself fairly adept at laravel - I use it daily for some large and complex web application, have been using it for years. Like many developers, I'm self taught and learned a lot of what I know by doing. I kind of thought that this book was going to mostly cover stuff I already know, but being self taught it's easy to pick up blind spots without realizing it. To compensate for that I like to read some basic, foundational books about whatever framework or language I'm currently working in to make sure that my grounding is solid and maybe pick up a few tricks. I usually end up just skimming through stuff I already know and just picking up one or two new tricks or concepts, maybe shoring up my understanding of some of the core principles. With this book, in the first 50 pages I learned like 5 cool things that I didn't even know you could do in Laravel and can't wait to use. There's a *ton* of great stuff here. It's thorough, he clearly understands the framework inside and out. Well written, clearly organized, easy to follow - if you're interested in Laravel or even if it's your daily bread and butter, this is a book you should own and read.

This is the best Laravel book I have come across so far. It assumes you are not a complete beginner; you have to have at least a working understanding of basic programming principals and preferably a bit of PHP experience to get the most out of this book. But if you are in anyway capable at writing even the most basic PHP functions and understand things like arrays and for/while loops you will be well on your way to building your first app with Laravel.There's no run throughs i.e. "Build a blog in 30 minutes" etc etc. This is just a very strong, well written and concise overview of Laravel and as amazing as Laracasts is I guess I'm just old school when it comes to learning. Give me a well written book and let me work my way through it from page 1 - 405 and that's how I learn. I am now very proficient with Laravel and am moving on to my third project for a new client.The only negative thing I will say about this book is that it represents, finally, the nail in my Codeigniter coffin. Sorry CI but it was fun while it lasted......

As a long time half-assed PHP developer with no framework experience prior to Laravel, I decided to take the plunge. I started with Laracasts, spent about 2 months trying to wrap my head around everything then basically gave up for a couple months. Some people swear by learning via Laracasts alone, but I think they are waaayyyy smarter than me and have photographic memories. Then I received this book and it really helped me see the bigger picture and put all the pieces together.My recommendation for learning Laravel for non-uber-genius-developers:1. Watch some of the introductory Laracasts2. Read this book cover-to-cover and take lots of notes3. Re-watch the Laracasts then move on to working examples4. Create your own app

After coding in raw PHP for a long time, I thought I’d jump in to the Laravel framework. This book is a great resource. I have found it very useful as a quick resource and a different perspective to accomodate the Laravel documentation.

Excellent book for learning the basics of Laravel, but you must have at least minimal web experience to understand it all. Not for absolute beginners

Really great book for beginners like me. I recommend people learn the basics of PHP first, before jumping into Laravel.