Dynamic Method Helpers

Before using Laravel I was a big fan of Ruby on Rails and the feature that I loved the most about Ruby on Rails was the ability to create a helper method (in a module) and being able to call it like a global method.

Module BooksHelper
  def format_price(book)
    if book.free?
      content_tag(:strong, 'Free!')
    else
      number_to_currency(book.price)
    end
   end
end

<p><%= format_price(book) %></p>

Pretty cool isn't it?

Now as you might guess I want to have the same thing in Laravel.

Oh I should have said I have the same thing now with Laravel :)

Disclaimer: Of course you can create a folder with many files helpers or just one global file helper and autoload it with Composer but I rather prefer to create a class and it's much more clear when testing. So everyone may not like it!

Here are the steps if you also want it:

Install the package through Composer

composer require mercuryseries/laravel-helpers

Register the package service provider in config/app.php by adding:

MercurySeries\Helpers\HelpersServiceProvider::class,

Create a Helpers directory in your app folder.

Now you can create a Helpers directory in your app folder.

Add some classes with your helper methods

PS: All helper methods need to be static.

<?php

// File: app/Helpers/BooksHelper.php

namespace App\Helpers;

use App\Book;

class BooksHelper
{
    public static function formatPrice(Book $book)
    {
        if($book->isFree()) {
            return '<strong>Free!</strong>';
        } else {
            return sprintf('$%f', number_format($book->price, 2, '.', ''));
        }
    }
}

<?php

// File: app/Helpers/PagesHelper.php

namespace App\Helpers;

class PagesHelper
{
    public static function setActive($route)
    {
        // your code goes here
    }
}

Have fun now as me by using your helper methods

{{ $formatPrice($book) }}
{{ $setActive('home') }}

You can also call it with:

{{ App\Helpers\BooksHelper::formatPrice($book) }}

Don't forget to change App accordingly to your application's root namespace. But that is exactly what I want to avoid (that long stuff).

More Configuration?

The Helpers folder name and the namespace App\Helpers can be easily changed via the configuration file. Just publish it and edit it as you want:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="MercurySeries\Helpers\HelpersServiceProvider"

Cheers!