Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks in the world, with elegant and expressive syntax. It is easy to use, highly productive and allows you to build great, modern apps quickly. The framework provides a set of common patterns and best practices that can save you a lot of time and headache when developing your application. Above all, Laravel allows you to build custom software without compromising on functionality.
Besides that, it has a huge ecosystem of helpful packages and tools. It aims to provide many web project processes like integration, authorization, authentication, etc. There are over 500 Laravel packages offering all sorts of functionalities from social authorization, auditing, testing, notifications, eCommerce, and more.
So, if you're someone planning to build an app with Laravel, it is important to stay up-to-date about its most useful packages and tools. Because Laravel tools not only save your time and speed up time-to-market. But they also offer opportunities in numerous ways to improve the quality of your code and ultimate outcomes.
So, here are the top Laravel packages and tools that you need to develop web applications and websites faster.
Best Laravel Authentication Tools
NoCaptcha
- Ability to add Google captcha to your Laravel apps;
- Offer multiple captchas on the same page;
- Conditional login captcha;
- Secured access and Not especially for robots;
- Recaptcha facility with a secret key;
- It costs around $1.12 to $1.4 per 1000 captcha
Socialite
- A popular package for Social authentication functionality with OAuth;
- Supports most of the social media;
- Handles all the boilerplates;
- It's easy to use, keeps your code clean, and provides a high-level authentication.
Laravel Passport
- It is a simple API authentication tool and native OAuth2 implementation solution;
- Make the OAuth2 server easy to setup;
- Equipped with necessary database migrations, routes, and controller;
- It also includes pre-built Vue JS components;
- Friendly documentation.
Entrust
- It allows adding flexible codes to map user navigation and permissions;
- Offers a concise way to add role-based permissions in the Laravel app;
- Divided into four different categories: role, permission, role_users, and permission_user;
- Easy to install.
Laravel Auditing Tools & Packages
Laravel Debugbar
It allows you to have more tabs for easy access during the development process.
- It helps audit codes efficiently;
- Its dev toolbar displays DB queries, debug messages, and current route/controller;
- It can also process during request data;
- Authenticated.
Laravel Sentry
- It has its own Laravel integration;
- Sends a detailed email if there are unexpected errors;
- Efficient for tracking group errors and the entire block of code;
- Helps prioritize and resolve live errors;
- Allows you to aggregate errors by request details, user ID, app version, and other factors;
- Free to start and pricing based on the monthly events and transactions sent to Sentry.
Laravel Bugsnag
- It's a cross-platform tool for automatic, intelligent error monitoring;
- Can detect all exceptions and fix errors in Laravel;
- Automatically send diagnostic data;
- Offers fully customizable filtering and reporting;
- Send notifications on Slack and Pagerduty;
- Team plan of $29, Pro $59, and also offers customized plans.
Laravel Dusk
- It allows you to test your Laravel app from a user's perspective in a real browser;
- By default, equipped with Chromedriver;
- Automates browser testing with developer-friendly API;
- A powerful tool for websites using JavaScript;
- Make it easier to find a problem.
Laravel Envoy
- Task runner to simplify deployment process;
- Clean and minimal Blade style syntax;
- Send notifications on Slack and Discord after every execution;
- Allows execution of tasks on multiple servers;
- Easy configuration.
Laravel Horizon
- It makes it easy to track your metrics of the queue system like job throughput, runtime, and job failures with a clear dashboard;
- Open-source and free for the Laravel community;
- Code-driven configuration for Laravel-powered Redis queues;
- all of your queue worker configuration lives in source control;
- Analyze and report job failures too;
Laravel Notification Tools & Packages
Laravel Notification Channels
- It is a collection of custom notification drivers for Laravel applications;
- Allows to customize notifications;
- 54 ready-to-use channels of the popular services;
- Also, enables you to send SMS/VoIP;
- Minimal setup with quick integration.
Laravel Slack
- It allows you to push all your notifications to a standard slack Channel;
- Allows sending messages directly from the platform to various channels;
- Can have call collaboration and group chat;
- You can have a notification popup;
- Starts from $6.67 per month.
BotMan Studio
- The bundle built on the Laravel allows making chatbot experience development seamless;
- Supports multiple features and provides chatbot test tools;
- Build-in natural language processing;
- Suitable with Slack, Telegram, Amazon Alexa, and more;
- Provides a web driver implementation.
Best Laravel eCommerce Packages
Laravel Invoiceable
It is a small laravel package that makes the invoicing process very simple.
- It makes the invoicing process for Laravel apps easier;
- The package is payment gateway agnostic;
- Easy integration and offers to schedule for auto invoice generation;
- Compact with other tools and browsers;
- Pricing starts from $49/license.
Bagisto
- It is an open-source eCommerce ecosystem for building scalable online businesses;
- Equipped with Progressive Web App, Point Of Sales, B2B eCommerce features, and more extensions;
- Allows using different currencies;
- It also has inventory management, numerous themes with easy integration;
- Bagisto's pricing starts from $9.99/month.
Laravel Echo
- It is a JavaScript library to subscribe and listen to events broadcast by your server-side broadcasting driver;
- Provides a nice and clean syntax as well as public, private, and presence channels;
- Enable broadcasting P2P events with the whisper method;
- It can be installed via the NPM package manager;
- Compatible with Pusher service or Socket.IO library.
Laravel Media Library
- As the name suggests, it makes working with media objects easy;
- Allows taking any media file right from the web via URL;
- Offer custom directory structure;
- Ability to define file conversions, e.g., different image sizes, effects, etc.
- Offers automatic image optimization.
Other Top Laravel Packages & Tools
Eloquent-Sluggable
- It provides optimized and SEO-friendly URL slugs;
- Minimal configuration require;
- Easy to understand;
Laravel Charts
- It is a powerful charting library designed to be loaded over AJAX;
- Allow creating performant and customizable charts out of the box;
- Offers Laravel-specific features, e.g., routing, middlewares, and creation commands;
- Powered by Google Chart API;
- It also has an auto-discover feature.
Laravel Forge
- It makes web app provisions and deployment process a breeze by taking over most of the administrative work;
- Offers easy server management with clear UI;
- Compatible with Digital Ocean, Linode, AWS, Vultr;
- Feeds pre-configured up-to-date software for Ubuntu, PHP, Nginx, MySQL, etc.
- Free SSL certifications and works with any PHP framework;
- Different pricing models start at $12/month.
Conclusion
When building web applications with Laravel, one of the most important decisions is what tools and packages to use instead of building everything from scratch. The right choice can increase productivity and decrease development time, while the wrong choice can lead to bugs and poor performance.
In this post, we saw some of the best tools and packages in the Laravel ecosystem that you can use to build modern apps. They also allow you to focus on solving the actual problem your application needs to solve instead of spending time on the detail of the code.
I hope you enjoyed the post and are ready to try at least some of the Laravel packages in your project.