How set up Global Helpers in Laravel in 3 easy steps.

In Laravel, Global Helpers are an excellent way for making data or any other functionality available throughout your application with the use of a single function.

In this example I will show you how to set up a custom global helper in 3 easy steps.

Laravel Global Helpers - How to set up a custom global helper function #Shorts

Step 1

• Create a folder within your app directory called Helpers
• Create a file called utility_helpers.php within the Helpers directory.

Step 2

• In your composer.json file, add a section under autoload called files and add your utility_helpers.php within that section.

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "App\\": "app/",
        "Database\\Factories\\": "database/factories/",
        "Database\\Seeders\\": "database/seeders/"
    },
    "files": [
        "app\\Helpers\\utility_helper.php"
    ]
},

Step 3

• Back in your utility_helpers.php file, create your functions in which you want to make your data or functionality available throughout your application.
• In my example below, I created a simple function that evaluates the null status of a variable and returns the inverse. The function is exactly the same as executing the built-in PHP function !is_null($variable). In fact it uses is_null under the hood.

if (! function_exists('notNull')) {
   function notNull(mixed $value) 
   {
      return ! is_null($value);
   }
}

• I use this notNull($variable) function frequently throughout my projects. Although it does not add any additional functionality within my application. It makes code easier to read and looks a lot better than using the built-in function !is_null($variable).

Troubleshooting

If you have any issues or getting any errors within your application when working with your custom global helpers, please run composer dump-autoload in order for composer to fix any file imports.

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