Laravel 9 Preview Guide

Laravel 9 brings modern PHP features and developer experience improvements. Symfony 6 components, PHP 8 requirements, and anonymous migrations enhance development. At ZIRA Software, we prepare projects for Laravel 9 migration.

PHP 8 Requirement

Minimum PHP 8.0:

• Native attributes
• Named arguments
• Constructor property promotion
• Union types
• Match expressions

// Constructor property promotion
class User {
    public function __construct(
        public string $name,
        public string $email,
        public ?string $phone = null,
    ) {}
}

Symfony 6 Components

Updated dependencies:

• symfony/console 6.0
• symfony/http-foundation 6.0
• symfony/http-kernel 6.0
• symfony/routing 6.0

Anonymous Migrations

// Before: Named migration class
class CreateUsersTable extends Migration
{
    public function up() { }
}

// Laravel 9: Anonymous class
return new class extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('name');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }
};

Benefits:

• No class name conflicts
• Cleaner migration files
• Easier to manage

Improved Route Binding

// Implicit enum binding
enum Category: string {
    case Tech = 'tech';
    case News = 'news';
}

Route::get('/posts/{category}', function (Category $category) {
    return Post::where('category', $category->value)->get();
});

Full-Text Indexing

Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
    $table->string('title');
    $table->text('content');

    $table->fullText(['title', 'content']);
});

// Query
Post::whereFullText(['title', 'content'], 'Laravel')->get();

Controller Route Groups

Route::controller(PostController::class)->group(function () {
    Route::get('/posts', 'index');
    Route::post('/posts', 'store');
    Route::get('/posts/{post}', 'show');
});

Improved Accessors/Mutators

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Casts\Attribute;

class User extends Model
{
    // New syntax
    protected function name(): Attribute
    {
        return Attribute::make(
            get: fn ($value) => ucfirst($value),
            set: fn ($value) => strtolower($value),
        );
    }
}

Conclusion

Laravel 9 modernizes the framework with PHP 8 features and improved developer experience. Prepare for migration by ensuring PHP 8 compatibility.

Planning Laravel 9 migration? Contact ZIRA Software for upgrade assistance.