Laravel

Follow stronger established project patterns.

Style

• Prefer readable fluent chains for Laravel APIs, queries, collections, validation, responses, mail, and notifications.
• Represent stable application data with typed, immutable, logic-free DTOs or value objects instead of associative arrays.
• Use backed enums for constrained values instead of magic strings or integers.
• Use Carbon rather than date strings inside application code.
• Prefer Laravel helpers and collections over custom parsing, manipulation, or query-string construction.

HTTP

Prefer: route → controller → Form Request → typed data object → service or invokable action → JSON Resource or resource collection.

Configuration

Treat environment variables as scarce. Prefer, in order:

1. A class constant for values that change only with code.
2. A config value when changing it through a redeploy is acceptable.
3. An environment variable for runtime-specific values.

Eloquent

• Before adding $fillable or $guarded, check for global Model::unguarded() or Model::unguard(). Do not add mass-assignment properties when global unguarding is active.
• Avoid hardcoded table names in queries. Migrations may use them because they are frozen snapshots.