I am a full stack Laravel developer based 20 minutes outside of London, UK, with a passion for crafting custom software and exceptional user experiences since 2009. This blog details my continuous learning, journey, challenges, and solutions.en-gbhttps://christalks.dev/feed.rsshttps://christalks.dev/post/fastrack-your-api-integrations-with-the-connector-pattern-3104af04Wed, 04 Feb 26 09:49:31 +0000Integrating with external APIs is a common task for a developer, but it can quickly become a hard to maintain mess! I’ve often found myself repeating the same boilerplate code across different projects—manually setting up headers, handling authentication, and formatting responses for every single endpoint.https://christalks.dev/post/item-3104af04https://christalks.dev/post/seamless-password-migration-shifting-users-from-wordpress-to-laravel-132f22ddThu, 29 Jan 26 12:44:58 +0000One of the biggest hurdles in migrating a legacy site is the users database. You want to move to Laravel, but you don't want to force every single user to reset their password the moment you go live. Here's how you can achieve this when migrating from WordPress!https://christalks.dev/post/item-132f22ddhttps://christalks.dev/post/creating-a-deployer-serviceaccount-for-your-kubernetes-deployment-e20bf4f7Fri, 21 Nov 25 11:32:57 +0000Kubernetes can be confusing and creating service accounts for deployment is no exception. In this quick guide, I show you how to create an authenticated service account for deploying to Kubernetes!https://christalks.dev/post/item-e20bf4f7https://christalks.dev/post/secure-your-webhooks-in-laravel-preventing-data-spoofing-fe25a70eFri, 18 Apr 25 07:50:48 +0000Learn how to implement robust authentication using pre-shared keys and HMAC signatures to protect your webhook endpoints.https://christalks.dev/post/item-fe25a70ehttps://christalks.dev/post/using-custom-icons-in-filamentphp-493b6100Mon, 17 Feb 25 12:07:46 +0000Sometimes, the standard Heroicon set just isn't enough. Here's how you can quickly and easily add additional vectors to your Laravel FilamentPHP projecthttps://christalks.dev/post/item-493b6100https://christalks.dev/post/setting-up-locale-based-routing-in-laravel-with-middleware-a278d43aThu, 23 Jan 25 13:23:32 +0000Laravel is an excellent framework that supports multilingual functionality out of the box - but it doesn't go as far as setting up the routing for you. Here's how you can achieve it with simple routing and middleware.https://christalks.dev/post/item-a278d43ahttps://christalks.dev/post/testing-responsive-with-tailwindcss-cee113ceWed, 08 Jan 25 10:05:44 +0000If you're working on your responsive game, this tiny tooltip trick might be of use to you!https://christalks.dev/post/item-cee113cehttps://christalks.dev/post/another-pattern-lets-talk-about-state-machines-c8160e52Mon, 18 Nov 24 09:45:31 +0000The state machine pattern isn't something you often hear about, but its critical to almost every piece of technology you experience in every day lifehttps://christalks.dev/post/item-c8160e52https://christalks.dev/post/what-are-interfaces-otherwise-known-as-contracts-in-php-356e1508Sun, 17 Nov 24 21:56:11 +0000Interfaces - often known as contracts - felt like a big leap in the early days of programming. But it's good to know - they're not that scary!https://christalks.dev/post/item-356e1508https://christalks.dev/post/using-php-attributes-to-enhance-the-capabilities-of-enums-87109997Fri, 06 Sep 24 08:16:27 +0000PHP Attributes are a powerful feature of PHP >= 8. In this example, I provide a brief introduction to using reflection to enhance your Enums with PHP attributeshttps://christalks.dev/post/item-87109997https://christalks.dev/post/integrating-audit-logs-into-your-filamentphp-admin-panel-2e964ae3Wed, 21 Aug 24 15:40:15 +0000Following on from my recent introduction to my auditing package, I'm going to show how quick and easy it is to implement an audit log viewer into FilamentPHP admin panelhttps://christalks.dev/post/item-2e964ae3https://christalks.dev/post/keeping-track-of-activity-on-your-laravel-project-using-laravel-simple-auditing-deb19469Fri, 16 Aug 24 15:18:31 +0000I recently wrote a package (Simple Laravel Auditing) with the aim of making it quick and easy to add auditing in your Laravel Applicationhttps://christalks.dev/post/item-deb19469https://christalks.dev/post/leveraging-laravels-built-in-driver-functionality-a3210023Tue, 06 Aug 24 15:18:53 +0000Laravel makes heavy use of drivers for everything from session management to caching, and there's no reason why you shouldn't use it too!https://christalks.dev/post/item-a3210023https://christalks.dev/post/installing-custom-node-versions-using-node-version-manager-ab89311eThu, 18 Jul 24 09:05:04 +0000Installing node is made easy with Node Version Manager. This simple tutorial details how you can quickly and easily setup Node JS anywherehttps://christalks.dev/post/item-ab89311ehttps://christalks.dev/post/how-to-utilise-a-powerful-programming-pattern-in-laravel-the-action-pattern-c5934a81Tue, 02 Jul 24 16:35:33 +0000The action pattern is a common programming pattern that allows you to abstract code into elements known as actions. It's powerful and provides many advantages.https://christalks.dev/post/item-c5934a81https://christalks.dev/post/installing-kubernetes-rancher-with-rke2-helm-and-cert-manager-6e2e39c5Mon, 24 Jun 24 14:47:02 +0000A quick and dirty guide to installing Rancher, complete with SSL certificate to manage your Kubernetes clustershttps://christalks.dev/post/item-6e2e39c5https://christalks.dev/post/installing-and-safely-upgrading-meilisearch-to-the-latest-version-aa4327bfTue, 18 Jun 24 14:33:05 +0000Meilisearch is an amazing open-source search engine with an intuitive API to rival the likes of Algolia. Upgrading can be scary, so I automated it with a bash script!https://christalks.dev/post/item-aa4327bfhttps://christalks.dev/post/prefixing-your-medias-storage-paths-with-spatie-media-library-c5393b69Wed, 24 Apr 24 10:17:52 +0000I use Spatie Media Library - a lot - and one really useful technique is to have the same storage system, with environment prefixeshttps://christalks.dev/post/item-c5393b69https://christalks.dev/post/adding-google-recaptcha-to-livewire-components-fb3ac446Wed, 17 Apr 24 09:54:09 +0000Adding ReCaptcha to your forms is a necessary step when handling public form submissions, but adding it for Livewire is a little trickier. I'll explain how I go about this process.https://christalks.dev/post/item-fb3ac446https://christalks.dev/post/running-laravels-queue-worker-using-a-cron-schedule-696b2e2eThu, 04 Apr 24 08:34:53 +0000Queues are a powerful tool in the Laravel framework. Inherently, they require some setup - but what about smaller projects?https://christalks.dev/post/item-696b2e2ehttps://christalks.dev/post/using-laravels-sleep-helper-to-save-time-4b88299eTue, 02 Apr 24 12:06:12 +0000API's can be a pain - throttling is an issue you'll often encounter, particularly with large datasets. One workaround is to enforce delays between executionhttps://christalks.dev/post/item-4b88299ehttps://christalks.dev/post/creating-helper-functions-in-laravel-39960c68Tue, 02 Apr 24 12:01:24 +0000A quick tip for adding globally available 'helper methods' in Laravelhttps://christalks.dev/post/item-39960c68https://christalks.dev/post/using-laravels-lottery-helper-to-rate-limit-error-reporting-b0f28291Wed, 27 Mar 24 16:41:46 +0000I thought I'd share this quick tip as I'm in the process of building a system that handles large quantities of data. And with that, comes errors!https://christalks.dev/post/item-b0f28291https://christalks.dev/post/efficiently-testing-components-with-laravel-livewires-testing-utilities-d8990a46Tue, 26 Mar 24 10:03:51 +0000I've been writing some tests to check my new subscription form functions as expected. I show how easy it is to write tests to make assertions against a Livewire component.https://christalks.dev/post/item-d8990a46https://christalks.dev/post/deploying-a-laravel-application-with-deployer-and-github-actions-718ece72Mon, 25 Mar 24 16:38:58 +0000I share a surprisingly simple zero-downtime deployment technique that utilises Deployer 7 and GitHub Actions to automatically and atomically deploy Laravel applications.https://christalks.dev/post/item-718ece72https://christalks.dev/post/rebuilding-my-trust-in-testing-with-github-actions-8e5a9048Sun, 24 Mar 24 21:13:40 +0000As we make the switch from BitBucket to GitHub, I've been embracing GitHub Actions for automatic test running. I'm sharing our most commonly used test configuration.https://christalks.dev/post/item-8e5a9048https://christalks.dev/post/building-a-blog-with-laravel-1018c9b2Fri, 22 Mar 24 16:45:56 +0000Detailing my decisions and choices when making this blog I give a quick insight into the technology stack that I chose and some of the reasons why.https://christalks.dev/post/item-1018c9b2