Laravel Naming Conventions

Laravel is probably the most well-known PHP framework in the market today. It is used by thousands of companies and developers every day to develop all kinds of cool and exciting products.

This is why it is more important than ever to implement fairly strict naming conventions. Using naming conventions will help you and your team to keep your project and code consistent.

In this article I will cover common naming conventions for a Laravel project.

I have also included a short video explaining everything in this article.

Routes

• Routes consisting of a single word should be plural.

Good Example

Route::get('/posts')

Bad Example

Route::get('/post')

• Routes consisting of multiple words should be in ‘kebab-case’ and only the last word should be plural.

Good Example

Route::get('/blog-posts')

Bad Example

Route::get('/blogPost')

• Named Routes should be plural and ‘dot’ separated including the resource method.

Good Example

->name('posts.index')

Bad Example

->name('post.list')

Controllers

• Controllers should be ‘singular’ and in ‘PascalCase’, suffixed by the word ‘Controller’.

Good Example

PostController, BlogPostController

Bad Example

PostsController, blogPostsController

Models

• Models should be ‘singular’ and in ‘PascalCase’.

Good Example

Post, PostComment

Bad Example

Posts, PostComments

Methods (Functions) and Properties (Variables)

• Methods and Properties should be in ‘camelCase’.

Good Example

setPostName()

Bad Example

set_post_name()

Pivot Models

• Pivot models should be ‘singular’ and in ‘PascalCase’ and in ‘alphabetical’ order.

Good Example

PostTag

Bad Example

postsTags

Pivot Tables

• Pivot tables should be ‘singular’ and in ‘snake_case’ and in ‘alphabetical’ order.

Good Example

post_tag

Bad Example

PostsTags, postTags

Table Names

• Table names should be in ‘snake_case’ and the last word should be plural.

Good Example

posts, post_comments

Bad Example

post,PostComments, postComment

File Names (Including blade views)

• File names should be in ‘snake_case’ and this includes the ‘blade’ view files.

Good Example

active_users.blade.php

Bad Example

activeUsers.blade.php, active-users.blade.php

Configuration

• Configuration files should be in ‘snake_case’.

Good Example

utility_helper.php

Bad Example

utilityHelper.php, utility-helper.php

Policies

• Policies should be ‘singular’ and in ‘PascalCase’ (same as the Models) and suffixed with the word ‘Policy’.

Good Example

PostPolicy.php

Bad Example

postPolicies.php, Post-policy.php

If I missed something, please let me know so I can keep this article up to date.

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