Learn what there is to learn about lastInsertId, then if it fits the use case, use it. If it does not fit the use case, don't use it.

Just like Linux dd you have to know what you are doing.

This should also apply to people giving advice. This is NOT the place to use it. You're suggesting the wrong approach. It doesn't answer the user's question and may cause bugs now or later.

Laravel gets the last ID right after performing a query. The same method isn't guaranteed to work at the app level, and I already listed some common examples where this would break down. Even if it worked at start, later changes may break it in a way that's easy to miss.

If you need the last ID of a table for some reason, query max(id). Don't use last_insert_id() outside the ORM.

I got into this profession as I wanted to solve problems, and don't feel at all that AI is depriving me of something, quite the opposite.

We often think our job as an engineer is writing code, but really our benchmark should be how we can solve problems with as little code as possible.

The role has changed somewhat over the years, and now an engineer is as much QA and planner as they are coder. With the right plan, we have the tools to translate that into any language we want. I'm predominantly PHP but have built in VueJS, typescript, React and node and have done so because I know what I wanted and made sure the tools delivered it.

The stack overflow days were awful if we really think about it. Code copy pasta was rife with bugs and opinion. For niche questions you'd be left on a wire for weeks. What a passion killer.

Now I've gone from asking other team members for advice to being able to glean and gather information and instructions much quicker. Being able to get live code instantly has been a revolution, especially for the self taught.

The role forward for an engineer will always be to solve problems and no tooling will take that away from us. A good engineer will become a polyglot and still be able to be employable.

I use AI for every project now, from code to car mechanics, electronics, DIY. I can't wait to see what happens when the second revolution comes. Bring it on.

This is the best short explanation of JavaScript Functions I have ever seen, thank you, Andre!

That's it! That is exactly it. I did indeed run some tests on a feature I had added just before doing the upgrade.

Thank you so so much. This community is fantastic!

what error? Go on, give us a clue!

I got an error.

@oligarchcat Which was…?

This may come as a surprise to you, but we’re neither clairvoyant nor can we see your screen. So if you did get an error, you kinda have to tell us what that error was for any one to be able to even start helping you.

@vincent15000 It was a full end-to-end tutorial that took people through creating a Laravel application from start to finish. But it disappeared.

It’s since been re-created, and re-launched under the new “learn” subdomain: https://laravel.com/learn/getting-started-with-laravel

It is still worth following. Don't know why they removed it, but they added a link to Laracasts instead which in my opinion is the better choice anyway.

If you are referring to the Laravel From Scratch 2026 and 30 Days To Learn Laravel, well they are basically the same thing, it doesn't really matter that much which one you choose. I would go with the From Scratch one.

I've had it before when a cache has got stale, and my running my tests (which do use refreshDatabase trait) cleared my local dev tables not my test database.

Perhaps thats what caused your issues?

I ran artisan php artisan optimize:clear which cleared up the caches and sorted the issue for me.

@panthro S3 will let you host as much as you want, but you will have to pay for that. I know as I operate a video on demand site built on AWS services such as S3.

Also, this thread is two years old.

Like https://laracasts.com/series/javascript-essentials-for-php-developers

I've had it before when a cache has got stale, and my running my tests (which do use refreshDatabase trait) cleared my local dev tables not my test database.

Perhaps thats what caused your issues?

I ran artisan php artisan optimize:clear which cleared up the caches and sorted the issue for me.

Cloudflare sell domains at cost. I'm a bit fan.

providing you have your APP_ENV=production, you wont be able to run migrate:fresh via artisan without it nagging you.

Great series Jeremy! Re: the currently authenticated user - I'm pretty sure that's already stored in memory so there's no point in storing it in context unless you need it in a queue job. Auth::user() doesn't make any additional db queries - Laravel only retrieves the user once (at the beginning of every request).

I would suggest trying them both, and make a decision from that.

Like Lary states, PHPStorm has Laravel Idea which is awesome.

The Official Laravel VS Code plugin might work with Cursor, but that is not as good as Larvel Idea.

@automica Use Socialite to get OAuth tokens from other providers (i.e. Etsy). Use Passport to offer tokens to other parties, to allow them your users to authorize access to those providers.

So yes, in your case you would want to use Socialite to obtain an access token for an Etsy user. You can use this: https://socialiteproviders.com/Etsy

Once you have an OAuth token for an Etsy user, you will be able to make requests to Etsy’s API as that user.

I bought my lifetime several years ago and I never regretted it.

There’s a lot of debate around this.

From my experience, AI significantly reduces time to production—projects that once took months or weeks can now be completed in days or hours. Refactoring is faster as well.

That said, when AI breaks down, a developer still has to understand and fix the code. I’ve heard of teams abandoning AI-generated projects because no one fully understood the codebase.

Bottom line: AI is a productivity tool, not a replacement. It can help, but it’s not a silver bullet.

Marketing is still marketing—SEO, targeting, and messaging matter. Relying entirely on AI for marketing content can be risky if it gets things wrong.

Used carefully, AI is valuable. Used blindly, it can create problems.

Hiring teams primarily look for learning ability, strong fundamentals, and practical problem-solving skills—not senior-level infrastructure expertise.

To get a junior Laravel job you should build a few solid, real-world Laravel projects that demonstrate core PHP/Laravel knowledge (CRUD, authentication, validation, relationships, testing, and Git), basic SQL, and simple deployment, while understanding DevOps, cloud, and system design concepts only at a high level rather than fully implementing them.

Think of AI as a way to do what you were going to do anyway but quicker.

As AI can write code quicker, it can also ruin codebases quicker too. You can protect yourself from this by ensuring you support your code with functional tests, and also ensure you have a good version control strategy (ie learn git, commit small and often).

It's totally possible to follow test driven development strategy working with Agentic code tools. You need to stay focussed, keep a check on the outputs of your methods and continue to review your own code before you publish to production.

You should also look at writing an agents.md file to describe to your AI how your code base is structured and how you prefer to write code. My agents.md describes how my commit messages are made, how to run linting and what conventions our code base is following. This is essentially a glorified readme.md specifically targeted at AI. Be careful not to be too verbose in here though as this file is passed to your AI with every prompt so will chew through the credits.

Web developers have a great future ahead of them if they remember that they are solving problems with code, not just there to churn out code. For me it's like I've gone up a step and instead of writing code, I spend more time on the acceptance criteria, testing and planning.

Back when I started in web, we had to make html by hand. Now AI's are enabling speeding through this kind of work and now I'm able to concentrate on the quality of output and to be able to prototype quicker (and be less precious of throwing stuff away).

I can't wait to see what we're going to get next!!

I'm using PHPStorm running cursor-agent in command line. Gets you the best of cursor, with a pro IDE.

Think of AI as a way to do what you were going to do anyway but quicker.

As AI can write code quicker, it can also ruin codebases quicker too. You can protect yourself from this by ensuring you support your code with functional tests, and also ensure you have a good version control strategy (ie learn git, commit small and often).

It's totally possible to follow test driven development strategy working with Agentic code tools. You need to stay focussed, keep a check on the outputs of your methods and continue to review your own code before you publish to production.

You should also look at writing an agents.md file to describe to your AI how your code base is structured and how you prefer to write code. My agents.md describes how my commit messages are made, how to run linting and what conventions our code base is following. This is essentially a glorified readme.md specifically targeted at AI. Be careful not to be too verbose in here though as this file is passed to your AI with every prompt so will chew through the credits.

Web developers have a great future ahead of them if they remember that they are solving problems with code, not just there to churn out code. For me it's like I've gone up a step and instead of writing code, I spend more time on the acceptance criteria, testing and planning.

Back when I started in web, we had to make html by hand. Now AI's are enabling speeding through this kind of work and now I'm able to concentrate on the quality of output and to be able to prototype quicker (and be less precious of throwing stuff away).

I can't wait to see what we're going to get next!!

"Duplication is far cheaper than the wrong abstraction."

Nice thought!

laravel best practice favours camelCase over snake_case for variable names.