How to create and publish a Laravel package on packagist

A Laravel package is a set of reusable classes created to add extra functionality to a Laravel website. In clearer terms, a package is to Laravel, what plugins are to WordPress. The primary goal of Laravel packages is to reduce development time by making reusable features into a set of standalone classes that can be used within any Laravel project.

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Getting Started

• Create a fresh laravel package

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel packagetestapp

• change directory to the new folder

cd packagetestapp

• When it's done you need to configure your env file and set your app key and other necessary details. In your terminal type:

cp .env.example .env

• generate the app key

php artisan key:generate

• create a folder called packages, then create a new folder called samuelayo.

Note that you can subtitute samuelayo with your own vendor name. Be sure to change the refrence in every other aspect of the app

• clone this repository to the newly created folder

git clone https://github.com/samuelayo/contact-form-package.git packages/samuelayo/contactform

• Tell Laravel how to load our package and use it's functions, so inside the root of your Laravel app in the composer.json add this code:

"autoload": {
        "classmap": [
            "database/seeds",
            "database/factories"
        ],
        "psr-4": {
            "Samuelayo\\Contactform\\": "packages/samuelayo/contactform/src",
            "App\\": "app/"
        }
    },
    "autoload-dev": {
        "psr-4": {
            "Samuelayo\\Contactform\\": "packages/samuelayo/contactform/src",
            "Tests\\": "tests/"
        }
    },

• Dump the composer autoloader

composer dump-autoload

• Next, we need to add our new Service Provider in our config/app.php inside the providers array:

'providers' => [
         ...,
            App\Providers\RouteServiceProvider::class,
            // Our new package class
            Samuelayo\Contactform\ContactFormServiceProvider::class,
        ],

• Migrate the database tables

php artisan migrate

And finally, start the application by running:

php artisan serve

Visit http://localhost:8000/contact in your browser to view the demo.

If you want to include the project as a package to your app, run:

composer require samuelayo/contactform

Built With

• Laravel - The PHP framework for web artisans.