Creating custom helpers

Depending on how many helper functions you intend to move over, I suggest two options:

• Create app/Http/helpers.php and move all of your functions into there
• Add the helpers.php file to your composer.json autoload files

{
    "autoload": {
        "files": [
            "app/helpers.php"
        ]
    }
}

However, if you have a lot of helper functions or they contain a large amount of logic, I'd suggest creating helper files foreach individual functionality:

• Create app/Http/Helpers/TranslatedStringHelper.php and add the corresponding function(s)
• Create a new HelperServiceProvider.php and add loop to dynamically require helpers

public function register()
{
    foreach (glob(app_path().'/Helpers/*.php') as $filename){
        require_once($filename);
    }
}

• Register the service provider in your config/app.php

'providers' => [
    'App\Providers\HelperServiceProvider',
]

In both cases, you should now be able to use the functions define within the helper file(s) you have created. Using just one file to contain all of your helper functions can become hard to maintain so I'd suggest the latter as it is a more object oriented approach.

You can add classmap or file in composer.json. You can make "Helpers" class with static functions. Many ways to go about it.

Ok. But how would I access the translations table in my database from within these helpers?

When I have the instance of laravel, it is easy as I have eloquent, but I do not have that directly in my helpers?

@Kenneth_H To access your translations table, you can use DB::table('translations')

$translations = DB::table('translations')->get();

Ok. But what about configuration entries? I need to get the locale property from the config/app.php? Can I use the Configuration classes get() method for that?

@Kenneth_H You can use Laravel 5's config helper.

config('foo.bar', 'default')