Create a Laravel 8 Blog - Part 2: Scaffolding

Overview

• Part 1: Walk-through installing and configuring Laravel
• Part 2: Create the core models/tables, controllers, and views
• Part 3: Authorization/Login
• Part 4: Post CRUD
• Part 5: Comment CRUD
• Part 6: Validation
• Part 7: Testing

Add MySQL tables

Posts and Comments

We're going to add migration files that create the MySQL tables.

./vendor/bin/sail artisan make:migration posts
./vendor/bin/sail artisan make:migration comments

# database/migrations/2021_06_23_155553_posts.php 

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class Posts extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->unsignedBigInteger('user_id');
            $table->foreign('user_id')
              ->references('id')->on('users')
              ->onDelete('cascade');
            $table->string('title')->unique();
            $table->text('body');
            $table->text('metaDescription');
            $table->string('metaTitle');
            $table->string('slug')->unique();
            $table->boolean('active');
            $table->timestamps();
          });      
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::drop('posts');
    }
}

# database/migrations/2021_06_23_155557_comments.php

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class Comments extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('comments', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->unsignedBigInteger('post_id');
            $table->unsignedBigInteger('user_id');
            $table->foreign('post_id')
              ->references('id')->on('posts')
              ->onDelete('cascade');
            $table->foreign('user_id')
              ->references('id')->on('users')
              ->onDelete('cascade');
            $table->text('comment');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::drop('comments');
    }
}

See the commit

Users

Adjust the standard user migration to add a new columnn to track the user's role.

# database/migrations/2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php

$table->enum('role',['admin','author','user'])->default('author');

See the commit

Run the Migrations

./vendor/bin/sail artisan migrate

Make the models

Make the Post and Comment model + adjust the User model to fetch the linked posts or comments.

./vendor/bin/sail artisan make:model Post
./vendor/bin/sail artisan make:model Comment

# app/Models/Post.php

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    use HasFactory;

    /**
     * Get the comments made on the post
     *
     * @return array App\Models\Comment
     */
    public function comments()
    {
        return $this->hasMany('App\Models\Comment', 'post_id');
    }
    
    /**
     * Get the user who created the post
     *
     * @return App\Models\User
     */
    public function author()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo('App\Models\User', 'user_id');
    }
}

<?php
#  app/Models/Comment.php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Comment extends Model
{
    use HasFactory;

    /**
     * The user who wrote the comment
     *
     * @return App\Models\User
     */
    public function author()
    {
      return $this->belongsTo('App\Models\User', 'user_id');
    }
    
    /**
     * The post the comment is associated with
     *
     * @return App\Models\Post
     */
    public function post()
    {
      return $this->belongsTo('App\Models\Posts', 'post_id');
    }
  
}

Add these to the existing User model.

# app/Models/User.php

public function posts()
{
    return $this->hasMany('App\Models\Posts', 'user_id');
}

public function comments()
{
    return $this->hasMany('App\Models\Comments', 'user_id');
}

See commit 1

See commit 2

View/Layout

Add the base template to get a shared HTML structure started.

mkdir resources/views/layouts

Copy the welcome blade file and adjust it to include a @yield('content') where you want the content to show up and @yield('title') where you want the page title to show up.

cp resources/views/welcome.blade.php resources/views/layouts/app.blade.php

See the commit

Add Post controller, view, and route

./vendor/bin/sail artisan make:controller PostController

mkdir resources/views/blog/

Add the PostController, it will fetch all active posts.

<?php
# app/Http/Controllers/PostController.php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Support\Str;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

use App\Models\Post;

class PostController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $posts = Post::where('active', 1)
            ->orderBy('created_at','desc')
            ->get();

        //return blog.blade.php template from resources/views folder
        return view('blog.index', ['posts' => $posts, 'title' => 'Blog Posts']);
    }
}

# resources/views/layouts/app.blade.php 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="{{ str_replace('_', '-', app()->getLocale()) }}">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
        <title>{{ $title }}</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        @yield('content')
    </body>
</html>

# resources/views/blog/index.blade.php

@extends('layouts.app')

@section('content')
    <h1>{{$title}}</h1>
    @forelse ($posts as $post)
        <li>{{ $post->title }}</li>
    @empty
        <p>No posts</p>
    @endforelse
@stop

Add the route to send the URI /blog to the controller

# routes/web.php

Route::get('/blog', 'App\Http\Controllers\PostController@index');

See commit 1

See commit 2

Test it out

Load the /blog path in the browser and confirm it works. http://localhost:6001/blog. You should see the title of Blog Posts and No posts because we haven't added anything yet.

Roundup

That's it for now. Part 3 will go through setting up a login mechanism and handling authorization.

Next: Authorization/Login