On PHPMaster.com today there's a new post from Daniel Gafitescu that compares CodeIgniter (an "old standby" in the PHP framework world) and Laravel, a relative newcomer. The article is broken up into a few different categories, with some sample code included to illustrate.

n the beginning of my career I stumble upon CodeIgniter and I love it for its simplicity, small footprint, and good documentation. [...] But last year, because of the Twitter buzz from some in the PHP community, blog posts, and the suggestions of some friends, I give Laravel 3 a try - and since that time I've never looked back. So, in this article I'd like to present a comparison of the two frameworks from my point of view.

He compares the two frameworks based on things like the requirements to get them installed, how they handle creating REST APIs, the general organization of their code (and your code using them) as well as command line support. There's a "miscellaneous" section that talks about some of the smaller differences and a (very) brief mention of the communities for each.

NetTuts.com has posted a new article for the Laravel users out there - a tutorial showing how to test Laravel controllers via PHPUnit tests.

Testing controllers isn't the easiest thing in the world. Well, let me rephrase that: testing them is a cinch; what's difficult, at least at first, is determining what to test. Should a controller test verify text on the page? Should it touch the database? Should it ensure that variables exist in the view? If this is your first hay-ride, these things can be confusing! Let me help.

They break up the testing process into three main chunks - isolation of the tests (mocking where need be), calling the controller method and running the checks (assertions) to be sure the result is valid. They start with a basic controller test that runs a GET request on the "posts" method. They also mention the assertion helper methods included with Laravel controller testing, things like "assertRedirectedTo" and "assertSessionHas". The article then gets into moreo practical examples showing a TDD approach to testing some simple controller calls, mocking data connections, handling redirects and repositories.

NetTuts.com has a new article today for the Laravel developers out there (an up and coming PHP framework) with some handy Sublime Text tips you can use to streamline your workflow.

Not too long ago, I built a handful of generators for Laravel, which ease the process of various tasks. Today, thanks to help from Gaurav Narula, we're turning things up a notch with the release of a new Sublime Text plugin that leverages the power of Artisan and the generators from directly within your editor.

They help you get it installed and running and show (via a screencast) the steps to use it when working in your code. Their examples show the creation of resources (all MVC aspects and configurations), working with Artisan commands, migrations and other bits of code.

In this new post to PHPMaster.com today Alexander Cogneau takes a look at what's different in version four (v4) of the Laravel framework as it has changed from version three.

Laravel is a PHP framework which uses the MVC pattern. Of course, there are many such projects and I'm not going to compare Laravel with other frameworks in this article. Instead, I'm going to share with you what's new in the newest version of Laravel - Laravel 4.

There's a list of things that have changed (each with a summary of what they are):

• Decoupled Components
• Creating a "Normal" Project
• Routes
• Better Code through Testing
• The Container and Its Bindings
• Improved CLI
• New Database Features
• Using Stand-Alone Components

On NetTuts.com today there's a new post with several resources and screencasts talking about what to expect from the upcoming release of the Laravel framework.

If you're keeping up on the latest news in the PHP community, then you likely know that Laravel 4 is on the near horizon. Its creator, Taylor Otwell, recently recorded a handful of screencasts to demonstrate what we can expect, including resourceful controllers, improvements to Eloquent, Composer support, and much more! Take a look after the jump!

The screencasts cover:

• Basic Routing and Composers
• Controllers and Filters
• IOC Container Basics
• Controller Injection and Unit Testing
• Eloquent Collections and Polymorphic Relations

You can find out more about the framework by visiting the project's main site or by following them on Twitter.

A new PHP-related podcast has started up, this time hosted by Phil Sturgeon and Ben Edmunds - the PHP Town Hall. They've posted their first episode - "Composer Kicks Ass, Laravel 4 Is Coming, and PHP Hosting Sucks - Guest Taylor Otwell"

In the first episode of the PHP Town Hall podcast, Phil Sturgeon and Ben Edmunds rant about how awesome Composer is; chat with Taylor Otwell about the upcoming Laravel 4 release; and whine about how horrible PHP PAAS hosting is.

You can listen to this podcast either through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 for listening offline or by subscribing to their feed.

In this new post to Reddit, a poster asks for opinions on the Laravel framework:

t seems to be the hot framework this year, straight out of the oven, and into the hands of many bloggers who religiously swear by it. I've been using it for a few weeks and have formed my own opinion on it.

He lists some his own pros (easy to learn, good routing) and cons (still very news, smaller community and support sources) and asks for thoughts from other users of the framework. Comments include things like:

• One of the downsides to laravel seems to be that it's an extremely fast moving target (in comparison to most other frameworks out there).
• Lack of contract / freelance work out there for it, and having to use the irc channel for support, where you can be somewhat overlooked if you ask beginner questions.
• It's a nice enough framework that leaves a bad taste in my mouth due to all the buzzwords used to describe it. Beautiful, artisan, fluid, etc etc. One word I hardly ever hear is utilitarian.
• My primary need as a developer at this point is stability. I simply can't bother with a package this new and unsupported, even if it is positively fantastic.

There's comments going both ways - some in support of the framework (including one of the authors of it) and some with their criticisms. What do you think of this new framework on the block - share here!

PHPMaster.com has continued their series about the Laravel framework today with this new tutorial they show you how to use the command line tool Artisan to work with database migrations.

For those who struggle with maintaining their database schema, or who have problems applying updates and often revert them, there is a solution. Laravel, the MVC framework which I wrote about previously, offers you migrations.

On the surface, the migrations are simple sets of "up" and "down" methods that allow you to apply and remove the changes required for the migration. It also allows you to perform a "rollback" on the updates just made and a "reset" to clear out all changes and start over from the base. There's also a shortcut to help generate migration code from a configuration string.

PHPMaster.com has a new tutorial in their series about the Laravel framework posted today asking if the framework is really "clean and classy" as its documentation describes.

"Laravel is a clean and classy framework for PHP web development. Freeing you from spaghetti code, Laravel helps you create wonderful applications using simple, expressive syntax. Development should be a creative experience that you enjoy, not something that is painful. Enjoy the fresh air." That's the text which can be found on the Laravel homepage and, if we'd believe it, wouldn't it be wonderful? Let's test this claim by building a simple TODO application and see how much effort we have to put into it.

The article is pretty high-level and only touches on some of the key features like migrations (to create the database) and making the controller, model and view for the basic TODO app.

NetTuts.com has posted the latest in their series about the Laravel framework with this new post, a look at creating filters, validators and working with files.

In this Nettuts+ mini-series, we'll build a web application from scratch, while diving into a great new PHP framework that's rapidly picking up steam, called Laravel. In this lesson, we'll be learning about some very useful Laravel features: filters, and both the validation and files libraries.

They continue improving their sample application ("Instapics") and show you how to:

• Create a filter to run before or after the request is handled
• Apply a set of validation rules to a given dataset
• Handle custom error messaging
• Work with local files and uploads

They then take all of this and apply it to their application, creating an "auth" filter and login form, creating a form and doing some validation on its results and letting the user upload an image file.