Laravel 12 Best Practices

Laravel 12.x Best Practices

This skill outlines the recommended software engineering practices for developing applications with Laravel 12.x. It incorporates modern PHP 8.2+ features, the latest Laravel 12 enhancements (such as the new starter kits and UUIDv7 defaults), and industry-standard architecture patterns.

When to Use

• New or existing Laravel 12.x apps: Apply to greenfield or existing apps, with or without the official starter kits, including setups that still adopt Inertia 2.0 or UUIDv7 defaults.
• Architecture decisions: Apply when choosing between standard MVC and domain-driven structure for complex domains.
• Quality gates: Apply when establishing linting, static analysis, and refactoring automation (Pint, PHPStan, Rector).
• Eloquent & data access: Apply when designing models, resource transformations, and query strictness to avoid N+1 issues.
• Testing strategy: Apply when selecting Pest or PHPUnit and standardizing factories and JSON assertions.
• Security posture: Apply when enforcing FormRequest validation, policy authorization, and safe query practices.

1. Project Setup & Architecture

Starter Kits

For new projects, prefer using the official Laravel 12 starter kits which now feature improved defaults:

• Frontend: Use the React, Vue, or Livewire starter kits which now integrate Inertia 2.0, TypeScript, Shadcn/UI, and Tailwind CSS out of the box.
• Authentication: Consider the WorkOS AuthKit variant included in starter kits for robust social auth, passkeys, and SSO support if building SaaS or enterprise apps.

Directory Structure

• Standard MVC: Follow the default app/ structure for small-to-medium applications.
• Domain Driven Design (DDD): For complex applications, organize code by domain (e.g., src/Domains/Order, src/Domains/User) rather than by technical layer.
• Strict Typing: Enable strict types in all PHP files (declare(strict_types=1);).

2. Code Quality & Style

• Linting: Use Laravel Pint (built on top of PHP-CS-Fixer) to enforce the PER Coding Style.
• Static Analysis: Maintain a high level of code safety using PHPStan (Level 5 minimum recommended).
• Refactoring: Utilize the rector/rector package to automatically upgrade older PHP syntax to modern PHP 8.2+ standards.

3. Eloquent & Database

Model Practices

• UUIDs: Leverage Laravel 12's default support for UUIDv7 in the HasUuids trait for time-sortable unique identifiers.
• Resources: Use the new fluent methods for transforming models into API resources:

  // Preferred
  return User::find(1)->toResource();
  return User::query()->paginate()->toResourceCollection();
  

• Mass Assignment: Always use $fillable or $guarded properties to prevent mass assignment vulnerabilities.
• Strictness: Prevent "lazy loading" in development to avoid N+1 query performance issues.

  // In AppServiceProvider::boot()
  Model::preventLazyLoading(! $this->app->isProduction());
  

Data Handling

• Collections: Use strict collection methods like Arr::sole() when you expect exactly one result.
• Context: Use the Context facade for handling request-scoped data (logging, tracing) instead of global state.

4. Testing

Frameworks

• Pest PHP: Preferred for its expressive syntax and minimal boilerplate.
• PHPUnit 12: If using PHPUnit, ensure you are utilizing v12 features supported by Laravel 12.

Best Practices

• Factories: Always use Model Factories for test data generation. Avoid manually inserting rows.
• Assertions: Use fluent JSON assertions for API testing:

  $response->assertJson(fn (AssertableJson $json) =>
      $json->has('data')
           ->where('data.id', 1)
           ->etc()
  );
  

• Queue Faking: Utilize the enhanced Queue::fake() assertions to verify job dispatch logic without running the actual background processes.

5. Security

• Validation: Put all validation logic in FormRequest classes, not Controllers.
• Authorization: Use Policies and Gates strictly. Ensure every controller action authorizes the user action (e.g., $this->authorize('update', $post)).
• Sanitization: Rely on Blade's {{ }} auto-escaping and Eloquent's parameter binding. Never pass user input directly to raw SQL queries.

6. Performance

• Caching: Utilize Cache::remember for expensive queries.
• HTTP Client: Use the afterResponse() hook in the HTTP client to handle cross-cutting concerns (logging, error mapping) for outgoing API requests.
• Queues: Offload heavy tasks (emails, report generation) to the queue system. Monitor queues using Laravel Horizon.

7. Dependency Management

• Updates: Laravel 12 is a "maintenance release" focusing on stability. Keep dependencies updated regularly using composer update.
• Breaking Changes: Be aware that while Laravel 12 has zero breaking changes in the framework code, upstream dependencies (like Carbon 3) may have subtle differences.