mariopro/laravel-widgets

#Widgets for Laravel

This packages provides widget functionality to boost your Laravel views. Includes asynchronous mode and generator.

Installation

composer require arrilot/laravel-widgets

Note: for Laravel 4 use composer require arrilot/laravel-widgets ~1.0

Then, register a service provider in your app.php config file

<?php

'providers' => [
    ...
    'Arrilot\Widgets\ServiceProvider',
],
?>

Finally, add the facades here too.

<?php

'aliases' => [
    ...
    'Widget'       => 'Arrilot\Widgets\Facade',
    'AsyncWidget'  => 'Arrilot\Widgets\AsyncFacade',
],
?>

Usage

Lets consider we want to make a list of recent news and reuse it in several views.

First of all we can create a Widget class using the artisan command provided by the package.

php artisan make:widget RecentNews

Now the folowing widget skeleton is created in your app/Widgets directory:

<?php namespace App\Widgets;

use Arrilot\Widgets\AbstractWidget;

class RecentNews extends AbstractWidget {

    /**
    * You can treat this method just like a controller action.
    * Return a view or anything you want to display
    */
	public function run()
	{

	}
}

As soon as domain logic is implemented inside the run() method, the widget can be included to a view in several ways:

{!! Widget::run('recentNews') !!}

or

{!! Widget::recentNews() !!}

or even

@widget('recentNews')

That's all!

Configuration

Namespaces configuration

By default package tries to find your widget in the App\Widgets namespace.

You can override this by publishing package config and setting default_namespace property.

Although using the default namespace is very convenient and keeps you from doing unnecessary actions, in some situations you may wish more flexibility. For example, if you've got dozens of widgets it makes sense to group them in namespaced folders.

You actually have several ways to call those widgets:

1. You can register widget in package config like that:

    'custom_namespaces_for_specific_widgets' => [
        'recentNews' => 'App\Widgets\News'
        ....
    ]

And then call it normally

{!! Widget::recentNews($config) !!}
{!! Widget::run('recentNews', $config) !!}
@widget('recentNews', $config)

2. You can pass full name to the run method

{!! Widget::run('News\RecentNews', $config) !!}
@widget('News\RecentNews', $config)

3. You can also use dot notation if you like it

{!! Widget::run('news.recentNews', $config) !!}
@widget('news.recentNews', $config)

Widget configuration

Using config array

Let's carry on with the "recent news" example.

Imagine that we usually need to show 5 news, but in some views we need to show 10. This can be easily achieved like that:

class RecentNews extends AbstractWidget {
    ...
    protected $count = 5;
    ...
}

...
{!! Widget::recentNews() !!}
...
{!! Widget::recentNews(['count' => 10]) !!}

['count' => 10] is a config array. Notice that you don't need to map a config array and class properties in constructor. It's done automatically behind the scene

Using additional parameters

You can also choose to pass additional parameters to the run() method directly if you like it.

{!! Widget::recentNews([], 'date', 'asc') !!}
{!! Widget::recentNews(['count' => 10], 'date', 'asc') !!}
{!! Widget::run('recentNews', ['count' => 10], 'date', 'asc') !!}
@widget('recentNews', ['count' => 10], 'date', 'asc')
...
public function run($sort_by, $sort_order) { }
...

run() method is resolved via Laravel service container so method injection is available here too.

Asynchronous widgets

In some situations it can be very beneficial to load widget content with AJAX.

Fortunately this can be achieved very easily!

All you need to do is to make sure you have jquery loaded for ajax calls and change Widget:: => AsyncWidget::, @widget => @async-widget

If asynchronous mode causes you any problems you can always change it back.