GUIDES
Forcing HTTPS at the web server level is generally the more reliable, more efficient approach — the Laravel-level solutions here matter mainly for asset URL generation and shared hosting without server config access.
A checkbox that's simply not checked never appears in the request data at all — validating it as required fails confusingly until the form explicitly sends a false/0 value when unchecked.
required, min/max, email, and unique — the validation rules that cover most real forms, plus the Form Request pattern for keeping validation out of the controller.
A custom class belongs in app/, autoloaded automatically by Composer's PSR-4 mapping — a global helper function needs one extra step: registering its file explicitly in composer.json.
How to register global helper functions in Laravel 11 and 12, including the composer.json autoload change from older versions.
A view name uses dot notation to represent a nested folder path — resources/views/products/show.blade.php is referenced as 'products.show', never with a literal slash.
The Laravel installer and plain composer create-project ultimately produce the exact same project — the installer just adds a friendlier setup wizard on top, nothing structurally different underneath.
make:model --all is the one flag worth knowing that most tutorials skip — it scaffolds the model, migration, factory, seeder, and controller together in a single command.
The -a flag on make:model generates a controller, factory, seeder, migration, and policy in one single command — genuinely faster than running five separate generator commands for a brand-new resource.
