Laravel CRUD Generator

Introduction

Please see the full documentation here.

This package adds a crud:generate command to Artisan in your Laravel project. With this command you can generate CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) for your db tables instantly!

The generated CRUD includes a Controller, Model, Policy, routes, validations, and 4 view files (index, create, edit, show). It also supports relations between tables, so you can generate nested CRUDs, for example: generating CRUD for comments inside a blog post.

The output is fully customizable and supports both Bootstrap 5 and Tailwind CSS.

Demo Video

Screenshots

Index page

Laravel-crud can generate nested CRUDs. For example, you can generate CRUD for customers > tickets > replies by simply running:

$ php artisan crud:generate customers.tickets.replies

Table layout

(Automatically generated index page with responsive table layout)

The generated views are fully customizable and template based. For example, you can change the look of the index page by using different templates like table, cards or chat (included in the package).

Card layout

$ php artisan crud:generate customers.tickets.replies -i cards

(Card layout)

Chat layout

$ php artisan crud:generate customers.tickets.replies -i chat

(Chat layout)

Create / Edit Forms

Laravel CRUD generator can automatically generate the FORM for creating and editing records. It can also generate the validation rules for the form.

(Example of generated fields)

Heads up!

The package is still in alpha

You should only use it with new projects. If you are using it in an existing project, make sure to back up (or commit) any project changes before running the command.

The aim of the CRUD generator is to save you time by generating common boilerplate CRUD code for any database table instantly.

But this code is not intended to be used as-is. You should always customize the generated code to fit your needs and manually review the generated files before deploying it to production.

Installation

Install with Composer

Via composer:

$ composer require san-kumar/laravel-crud --dev

Generate files

Important!

Make sure to create the db tables and run migrations before starting the crud generator.

After installing the package you should see a new crud:generate command in your Artisan commands list.

To generate the Controller, Model, Policy, routes, etc use the following command:

# Create CRUD for authors table
$ php artisan crud:generate authors

# Create CRUD for the authors > posts table
$ php artisan crud:generate authors.posts

# Create CRUD for the authors > posts > comments table  
$ php artisan crud:generate authors.posts.comments

Including the generated routes

By default, the generated routes are placed in the ./routes/crud/ directory. To include the generated routes just open your routes/web.php file and add the following line at the end of the file:

/* inside routes/web.php */

\San\Crud\Crud::routes(); 

This will glob all the generated route files and include them in the routes/web.php file for you.

Alternatively, you can copy-paste the generated routes from the ./routes/crud/ directory to your routes/web.php file. This way you make any changes to the generated route code as per your needs.

Location of the generated files

The crud:generate command will generate the following files and place them in the appropriate directories:

• Resource Controller
  • app/Http/Controllers/[Name].php
• Model
  • app/Model/[Name].php
• Policy
  • app/Policies/[Name]Policy.php
• Routes
  • routes/crud/[name].php
• Views
  • resources/views/[name]/(index|edit|create|show).blade.php

By default, the generated code will not overwrite any existing files. If you want to overwrite the existing files, you can use the --force option.

Options

CSS Framework: Bootstrap 5, and TailwindCSS.

You can choose between Bootstrap 5 and Tailwind CSS or you can use your own CSS framework. By default, Bootstrap 5 is used when nothing is specified.

# Create CRUD for authors table using Tailwind CSS
$ php artisan crud:generate authors --css=tailwind

# Shortcut for Tailwind CSS
$ php artisan crud:generate authors -t

# Create CRUD for authors table using layout 'layouts/admin.blade.php'
$ php artisan crud:generate authors --layout=admin
$ php artisan crud:generate authors --section=mysection

Prefix

You can add a route prefix for the generated CRUD by passing a --prefix option.

# Create CRUD for authors table using Tailwind CSS
$ php artisan crud:generate authors --prefix=admin

This will change the route from /authors to /admin/authors in all the generated files.

Index templates

You can choose between 3 ready-made index templates: table, cards and chat. By default, the table template is used.

# Create CRUD for authors table using cards template
$ php artisan crud:generate authors -i cards

# Create CRUD for authors table using chat template
$ php artisan crud:generate authors -i chat

Please see the index page here for screenshots.

Single create and edit form

In some cases, you may want to use a single form for both creating and editing a resource. You can do that by passing --merge-forms option.

# Create CRUD for authors table using a single form
$ php artisan crud:generate authors --merge-forms

This will generate a single view file called create-edit.blade.php and update the controller code accordingly so that it can be used for both creating and editing a resource.

Layout and section names

By default, the generated views use layouts/app.blade.php for layout and content for section name. You can change these default names by passing your own layout and section names.

Relational tables and nesting

In addition to generating simple CRUD for a single table, you can also generate CRUD for tables related to each other.

Example #1

For example, let's say we have the following tables:

• Authors
  • Posts
    • Comments

To generate CRUD for these tables you can use the dot notation to specify the parent tables like this: authors.posts.comments.

# Create CRUD for authors table
$ php artisan crud:generate authors

# Create CRUD for posts table
$ php artisan crud:generate authors.posts

# Create CRUD for comments table
$ php artisan crud:generate authors.posts.comments

This will generate CRUD files for the authors table, so you can view, create, edit and delete authors using the /authors route.

Then for each author, you can view, create, edit and delete posts using the /authors/{author}/posts route.

And for each post, you can view, create, edit and delete comments using the /authors/{author}/posts/{post}/comments route.

Example #2

On the other hand, if you want to generate CRUD for the posts table without nesting it under the authors route, you can do this:

# Create CRUD for posts table
$ php artisan crud:generate posts

# Create CRUD for comments table
$ php artisan crud:generate posts.comments

So now you can view, create, edit and delete all posts regardless of the author using the /posts route and then for each post, you can view, create, edit and delete comments using the /posts/{post}/comments route.

Authentication

Laravel CRUD generator uses the default Laravel authentication package laravel/ui for handling user authentication. The CRUD generator will automatically add authentication to routes (using the auth middleware) and generate Policy classes for Models.

user_id field in table

If you generate CRUD for any table that has a user_id field, then the generated CRUD will automatically generate a Policy file for the Model and add the authorizeResource method to the Resource Controller.

user_id in parent tables

If you generate CRUD for a table that has a user_id field in the parent tables (i.e. authors.posts.comments has a user_id field in the authors table), then the generated CRUD will automatically generate a Policy file for the Authors Model and add it to your Resource Controller in the appropriate places.

This way access to posts and comments will be restricted to the owner of the authors table only.

Create and Edit records

Laravel CRUD generator can automatically generate the FORM for creating and editing records. It can also generate the validation rules for the form.

Form fields

The form fields are generated based on the database table columns. The following column types are supported:

(Example of generated fields)

• string (input type text)
• text (textarea)
• integer (input type number)
• enum (select)
• boolean (radio buttons)
• relation (select with hydrated options)
• and so on...

It can also infer the field type from the column names. For example, if the column name is email, the field type will be email.

Validation rules

By default, all non-nullable fields are required. Columns with a unique index are also validated to be unique in the table.

Some additional validation rules are also added based on the column name. For example, if the column name is email, the validation rule will be email.

Relation fields

If the table has any foreign key columns, the generator will automatically add a select field for that column. The options for the select field will be hydrated from the related table.

For example, if your table has a country_id column and if the country table exists: the generator will add a select field for country (as shown in the image above) and the options for that select field will be hydrated from the countries table (if the country table has a user_id column, the options will be filtered by the current user).

Quick note about relation fields

You do need to add relation fields manually or create any foreign key columns in the database. The relation is inferred from the column name only. Any column name that matches the pattern *_id are considered relation.

For example, if the column name is country_id, the generator will look for a countries table and add if that exists (and if the current user has permission to access that table) it will add a select field for that column and hydrate the options from the countries table.

Soft deletes

Laravel provides a simple way to implement soft deletes on your Eloquent models. Soft deletes allow you to keep a record of a model's deletion without actually deleting the model from your database. This allows you to restore the model at a later time if needed.

Laravel CRUD generator handles tables with soft deletes automatically and generates the appropriate code for you to restore or purge deleted records.

(Handling soft deletes)

To show deleted records in the list view, just append ?trashed=1 to the URL (this link isn't added to the navigation menu by default, so you have to add it manually).

Inbuilt search

A very simple search is added to the list view by default. It searches the first text column of the table and filters the results.

This generated search code is just a placeholder, and you should customize it as per your own needs.

(Inbuilt search)

To modify the search algorithm just edit the index method of the Resource controller for that route.

Customization

Using your own templates

At the heart of Laravel CRUD generator are the templates files that are used to generate the CRUD files.

The templates files included with this package are stored in the ./vendor/san-kumar/laravel-crud/src/template directory.

It contains all the stub files that are used to generate the Controller, Model, Policy, routes, etc.

Customizing the templates

You can customize the templates by copying the template into a new directory and then modifying the template files.

To make this simple Laravel CRUD generator provides an artisan command that will copy the template files into a new directory for you.

# Copy the template files into a new directory
$ php artisan crud:template newname 

This will copy the template files into a new directory ./templates/newname/ directory.

It you want to specify a different directory to copy the template files into you can use the --directory or -d option.

# Copy the template files into a new directory
$ php artisan crud:template newname -d etc/templates

This will copy the template files into a new directory ./etc/templates/newname/ directory.

Using your own templates

To use your own templates you need to specify the template directory in the config/crud.php file.

// config/crud.php

return [
    'template_dir' => 'etc/templates/newname',
];

Alternatively you can specify the template directory using the --template or -t option while generating the CRUD.

# Generate the CRUD using the new template
$ php artisan crud:generate Post --template etc/templates/newname

Customizing the templates

You will need to modify the template files in the new directory to customize the generated files.

You will find multiple variables that are used in the template files that are replaced with the actual values when the files are generated.

To see the full list of variables that are used in the template files check out the source code for GenerateCrud.php

Known Gotchas

Laravel Jetstream

Laravel CRUD generator doesn't seem to work with Laravel jetstream just yet. If you are using jetstream, you can still use the package, but you will have to manually modify some generated code to fix the layout and authentication issues.

Inbuilt search

A very simple search is added to the list view by default. It searches the first text column of the table and filters the results. But this generated search code is just a rudimentary placeholder, and you should customize the search algorithm as per your own needs.

Opinionated code

While the package tries to be as flexible as possible, it still generates some opinionated code. For example, the generated CRUD uses Laravel's Policy classes for handling authorization. But you may prefer to use something else like spatie/laravel-permission, which can be done but requires you to create your own templates.

Alpha version

You should only use it with new projects. If you are using it in an existing project, make sure to back up (or commit) any project changes before running the command.

Removing the generated CRUD files

Remove files

Laravel CRUD Generator allows you to remove the generated files using the artisan crud:remove command.

$ php artisan crud:remove customers.tickets.replies

This will remove all the files generated by the crud:generate for this table.

Backup

If you want to keep the generated files, you can use the --backup option to move the files into a Zip archive instead.

$ php artisan crud:remove customers.tickets.replies --backup=backup.zip

This too will remove the files from the disk but will also create a Zip archive of all the removed files too.

License

The software is licensed using a MIT License. It means you can do whatever you want with it (including using it for commercial purposes freely), as long as you include the original copyright and license notice in any copy of the software/source.

Roadmap

• Add support for Livewire
• Add support for Laravel Jetstream

About

Found any bugs? Report them on the issue tracker.

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