Laravel Nova customization documentation - Paid or otherwise

Hi, I've been evaluating Nova now for a few weeks now. It IS awesome. Its documentation was very well laid out to put things in place with simple use cases.

TL;DR: Where's the documentation on customizing Nova?

The long version

Now we're at the step where we need to start customizing things. And where the pain came in. The advantages offered by Nova are rapidly getting dissolved by the lack of documentation for possible customizations. I've already discovered multiple features hidden here and there that are recognized to not be officially documented anywhere.

Is it just me or is there (almost) absolutely no docs on customization? I mean, how does everybody figure things out ? Scrape through source code and object inheritance to figure out what can do what ? :) I mean, I don't want to come out ranting, I'm just wondering where's the information ? I haven't found much here at laracasts discussions, on SO or even on github nova-issues where people end up because there's nowhere else. I've also looked through paid series here at Laracasts and the series that would interested me was published in 2018, way before Nova 4, and don't cover custom Assets, which is what I was looking for in particular.

Customization examples:

Setting default values on a create resource modal (the parent's id for example, so the parent is already selected and read only, since we are in the scope of the parent when we call the modal in the first place).
Create a custom "attach to" tool, that displays a list (maybe grid), with filters and select all / some to attach to related resource.

Thanks for any input on this, really like Nova, but I can't spend the next few months figuring out how to make simple customizations.

jlrdw

3 years ago

Level 75

I am guessing that many find these answers on stackoverflow or past laracasts post.

To search past laracasts I suggest rather than the search here, use google and put this in:

site:laracasts.com your search term

I have found many good past answers that way.

Also there are nova packages on Github as well.

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Nesster

3 years ago

Level 3

@jlrdw Thanks for your input. From your response and from what I've figured so far, if I want to sum things up the current situation with customizing Nova is this:

No, there is no documentation on customizing Nova (aside very basic, general instructions),
If people want to educate themselves, get prepared for a project that will require Nova customizations, they can't,
You rely on (often) outdated posts to answer your questions, if any.

Not trying to be a smart ass. But it helps deciding on the technology when we know what to expect from a product.

stevenfox

3 years ago

Level 10

Arriving at the need of serious Nova customizations can be a bit daunting. You're right, there aren't many resources out there. It would be awesome if the Laravel/Nova team could sponsor Jeff to do a Nova customization series that goes beyond what's already written in the docs and provides real-world examples of custom components. My guess is that Laracasts doesn't use Nova, so it would take time for them to learn exactly how all of this works themselves before creating a video to teach the subject matter (not to mention Nova is a business product, not open source). There's probably higher priorities (or lower hanging fruit) for the Laracasts team to devote themselves towards.

My best recommendation is:

Find an existing package (or multiple) that does the sort of custom functionality you require, and then either mold those to work for your use case, or figure out how they were written so that you can create your own package/component (with the existing stuff serving as a guide). Once you go through several of the well written packages for Nova (and there are surprisingly many, thank goodness), you start to get a feel for how you could quickly modify/create your own.

At the end of the day, if you're a strong enough developer to think "it's hard customizing Nova, so I'm going to write my own admin panel" then you're almost certainly capable of reverse engineering some stuff and coming out with a good solution in what is ultimately less time than starting from scratch. Of course, this all ultimately depends on the business requirements and who's paying for the development. The wonder of Nova is the ability to establish a constrained database interface (which is primarily what it is) that offers a limited bit of "extra" functionality (actions, cards, dashboards) very quickly (which equals cheap). If you're working on behalf of a client that has committed $250k to an admin panel/CMS/CRM, Nova isn't the path I'd take. That's like trying to win a MotoGP championship by starting with a Vespa. But if you need essential database record management and a bit of icing on the cake for $10k or less, Nova is one of very few ways to get it done.

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