Best Practices for Custom Helpers in Laravel 5

Question

I would like to create helper functions to avoid repeating code between views in Laravel 5:

view.blade.php

Foo Formated text: {{ fo         


        

Answer 1

Having sifted through a variety of answers on SO and Google, I still couldn't find an optimal approach. Most answers suggest we leave the application and rely on 3rd party tool Composer to do the job, but I'm not convinced coupling to a tool just to include a file is wise.

Andrew Brown's answer came the closest to how I think it should be approached, but (at least in 5.1), the service provider step is unnecessary. Heisian's answer highlights the use of PSR-4 which brings us one step closer. Here's my final implementation for helpers in views:

First, create a helper file anywhere in your apps directory, with a namespace:

namespace App\Helpers;

class BobFinder
{
    static function bob()
    {
        return 'Bob?! Is that you?!';
    }
}

Next, alias your class in config\app.php, in the aliases array:

'aliases' => [
    // Other aliases
    'BobFinder' => App\Helpers\BobFinder::class
]

And that should be all you need to do. PSR-4 and the alias should expose the helper to your views, so in your view, if you type:

{!! BobFinder::bob() !!}

It should output:

Bob?! Is that you?!