Laravel 10 Is Here: Check Out the Exciting New Features

With more than a decade of its existence, Laravel has carved a niche for itself and has simplified PHP development for all – be it novices or professional developers. Many Laravel development companies have offered secure, modern-day, robust applications and a reusable code that has attracted organizations to go in for Laravel.

The Laravel development services taskforce at Laravel has been attempting its best to offer newer and more secure features with each release. This article covers the latest release of Laravel development – Laravel 10 and the exciting features that have come along, to attract business owners and developers alike and to motivate them to move on to the latest release.

Before we plunge into understanding Laravel 10, let us quickly glance through the characteristics of Laravel and how is it beneficial for Laravel application development services.

What is Laravel Development?

Laravel is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It is a PHP framework for web artisans, a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. Laravel development services have an MVC design architecture with the least configuration and an impressive syntax, known for its simplistic and fast coding style.

Organizations hire Laravel developers for their software projects. Some of the well-known organizations that leverage Laravel are Pfizer, BBC, 9GAG, Fingent, Invoice Ninja, etc.

Key Features of Laravel Application Development Services

• Developer-friendly with easy integration
• Seamless compatibility with third-party libraries
• Secure, and robust with MVC architecture
• Routing mechanism with blade template engine
• Queue management with abstraction

An Interesting Read: Laravel Developer: Job Description, Responsibilities, Skills and More

A Brief About Laravel Releases

Laravel and its associated packages go by the Semantic Versioning system in which major updates are released once a year in the first quarter. Minor updates can be released as needed, which can then be adapted by Laravel development companies.

Earlier, the Laravel versions used to be released every six months. But after the release of Laravel 9, Taylor Otwell – the creator of Laravel, and the task force changed the rule of release schedule to an annual release, to lessen the burden on the developer community. This helped the core team to focus more on the specified frameworks with robust changes.

• Laravel 9 was released on February 8, 2022
• Laravel 10 was released on February 13, 2023
• Laravel 11 is expected to be released on February 6, 2024.

Upgrading to the latest release of Laravel, i.e. Laravel 10 is recommended for any Laravel web development company, when there is a stable application that is operating without hassles, your project needs a newer feature offered by this version and there is sufficient testing that will be performed once changes are final.

Interesting Features of the Newly Released Laravel 10

The current release of Laravel showcases features that are meant to enhance the security, functionality, and performance of applications. The previous versions of Laravel have offered wonderful features to the developer community in Laravel web development companies, be they novices or experienced professionals, which is why expectations from Laravel 10 are quite high. Have a glance through what comes along with Laravel 10:

1. No Support for PHP 8.0 and Lower

   Laravel 10 onwards, there is no support for PHP version 8.0 and lower. The minimal version needed is PHP version 8.1. Certain properties of PHP 8.1 like ‘readonly’ properties and ‘array_is_list’ will be launched in this version. PHP 8.2, which was introduced a few months back, can also be leveraged in Laravel 10 and its ecosystem which includes Envoyer, Vapor, and Forge.

2. Laravel Pennant is Here

   Laravel Pennant is a new entry with Laravel 10 that will offer Feature Flags for applications that will empower users to incrementally roll out newer application features easily and turn a feature on or off at runtime. As a lightweight, simplified approach, it will be a part of the well-designed and created package of Laravel that offers innovative functionalities. It includes multiple APIs and advanced features including an in-memory ‘array’ driver, A/B test interface design, trunk-based development approach, and a ‘database’ driver for continuous feature storage.

3. ‘Profile’ Option for Tests

   There is a new feature ‘- – profile’ feature that is being showcased with Laravel 10. This feature is meant to identify any slow-running tests in the application. It helps in fastening the tests after identifying them and taking actions accordingly, to avoid slower performance.

4. ‘Process’ Interaction

   A new abstraction layer is coming up in the current release to start and interact with external processes through the ‘Process’ face. For executing and managing concurrent processes easily, these Processes can be initiated through pools and asynchronous processes. The Laravel Process services offer easy ways to test and execute CLI processes with process output handling and rich testing features.

5. New String Password Generator

   There is a new method – ‘str::password’ that can come up with a secure password of the desired length. It will contain a merger of letters, symbols, numbers, and spaces. The default password value is 32 characters in length.

6. Artisan Command Turns Interactive

   Laravel has a Command Line Interface (CLI) called Artisan. With the latest release, it has turned more interactive since even if the users forget to pass the name after model creation, the newer Artisan provides you the facility to do so. It will not throw an error message, instead, it will ask for the name and further course of action.

7. Native Type Declarations in Skeleton Code

   This version will have native-type declarations in the app skeleton code. This shows that code produced by the framework will have return types and type hints, with features like method arguments, userland types in closure arguments, etc. This will offer developers an enhanced experience with better type clarity and auto-complete features. Earlier, Laravel used DocBlocks in its skeleton code and now it will be native type declarations.

8. Validation Rules will be Invokable by Default

   With the latest version, validation rules will be invokable by default, where invokable is a function. Earlier, if users had to make an invokable validation rule, they had to add the ‘—invokable’ flag after the Artisan command. But now, all validation rules will be invokable.

9. Predis V1 No Longer Supported, Move to Predis V2

   Predis is a Redis client for PHP to extract the best caching for a good user experience. Earlier, Laravel supported both versions but now with the latest, there is no support for Predis V1. Users may also use the native Redis extension of PHP to increase the website speed with more traffic.

10. Modification of Columns with Change () Method

    The new feature in Laravel 10 will empower users to leverage the change () method to modify columns on different databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, etc. without any other additional packages.

11. Quicker Hashing Algorithm

    There will be an addition of a Hash algorithm that is quick and has features like dispersion, output randomness, and distinctiveness for lessening collisions. PHP 8.1 offers support for the algorithm and Laravel 10 executes on PHP 8.11 hence the trustworthy hash algorithm will be great.

12. Eager Loading Optimization

    This new feature of eager loading optimization is like a fixture that handles the issue of several impossible queries to be executed. When there are no keys to be loaded, Laravel will come up with a query and check if there are keys accessible, and if not, there should be an empty collection, reducing the requirement of pointless database queries.

13. Deprecations Marked in Laravel 9 were Removed in This Version

    There were certain features and methods in Laravel application development services, that were marked as deprecated in the Laravel 9 version. Most of those have been removed in this current one. Even the ‘dispatchNow()’ method has been removed as it was deprecated in Laravel 9 in favor of ‘dispatchSync()’. Here is the list of deprecated methods that have been realized while comparing the Laravel framework’s master branch and 9. x branch:

    • Remove various deprecations
    • Remove deprecated dates property
    • Remove the deprecated Route::home method
    • Remove deprecated assetTimesSent
    • Remove Native PHP 8.1 array_is_list function

Welcoming Laravel 10 and Summing It Up

In the world of Laravel application development, Laravel 10 sounds like a promising launch, and no wonder, developers will be keen to go on for it. But should you upgrade to the latest version? The main thing is that in Laravel development, once you install a new instance, the codebase is yours and hence even if the version is old, the application will keep operating. So, it may not always be necessary to immediately upgrade to the latest version.

While availing Laravel development services, you can upgrade to Laravel 10 if your existing app is functioning perfectly, there is a feature that can help in performance enhancement and there is a complete testing cycle performed in your infrastructure. Many Laravel development companies are enjoying the release of Laravel 10, only time will tell how beneficial it is!