Some small and practical testing tips from yours truly. 1. If your tests are not hitting the database, remove the `use RefreshDatabase` statement. This will greatly speed up your test as it won't run migrations. ``` class ExampleTest { use RefreshDatabase; ... } ``` 2. If you want to see details when you run your tests but don't want to use 3rd party printer package, you can utilize the `--testdox` flag in PHPUnit. This flag will show which test class and method is currently running. ``` phpunit --testdox ``` 3. Getting overwhelmed with too many errors when you run a group of tests or your entire test suite? Use the `--stop-on-failure` flag in PHPUnit. This will cause the test to stop on first occurence of failure. ``` phpunit --stop-on-failure ``` Happy testing!

When using Laravel Passport, you can override the columns that you use to validate username and password for password grant clients (default is email and password) by adding these methods on your User model. // Within your User model, add the following methods.. use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Hash; ... public function findForPassport($username) { return $this->where('other_username_column', $username)->first(); } public function validateForPassportPasswordGrant($password) { return Hash::check($password, $this->some_other_password_attribute); } Source: `Laravel\Passport\Bridge\UserRepository@getUserEntityByUserCredentials`

You can utilise Laravel macro to extract properties from vendor classes that you won't normally have access to. Of course, given that the vendor class is using the Macroable trait. 

With the recent **Laravel 5.8 release**, it is now a lot easier to listen for **Eloquent Pivot** events. There are a lot of ways on how you can listen to Pivot Events and here's one way using Model Observers. Also, if you did not know, you can define a model for your pivot table using the following command `php artisan make:model PivotModelName --pivot`. An Eloquent model will be generated which you can use to define relationships back to owning Models. **ProTip:** This is really useful especially if you have 3 or more owning Models in a Pivot table. 

Okay, so this post will highlight something that I think is not being discussed enough, not just in Laravel, but in programming field in general. And this is very much applicable to those who are still studying and fresh grads. Someone, a while ago, just ranted to me something in the lines of *"nakakainis po kasi hindi po tinuro sa amin to sa college" (it's annoying because it wasn't taught to us in college)*. Now look, first and foremost I think one, if not the most, important skill of a good programmer is **knowing how to learn**. That means your willingness and ability to research and discover things on your own. Let me tell you that there are a lot of people in this field who either did not go through college, did not finish college or had a completely different degree in college, but are notably successful, just because they know how to learn. As someone who often screens people for developer position, I weigh too much on the candidate's ability to adapt and learn things. I do not ask candidates during the interview "did your college teach you about interfaces?", instead I ask "do you know about interfaces?". Because this field does not care how you gained such knowledge, this field cares if you already know it or at least willing to know it. And if your answer to those types of questions is along the lines of *you don't know it because your college did not teach you* then do not expect a callback from your interviewer. Second, the point of going through a computer college is not to spoon feed you all the skills that you need to be successful on the field. The point is so you could **acquire the ability to learn on your own**. Computer colleges will give you the fundamentals, but it's up to you to expand your knowledge around what you've learned. Technology improves so fast that you can't really expect your college curriculum to be up-to-date. So if you are the type of person who is lazy, or hates reading and researching, or used to getting spoon fed in high school then better shift to another course because you'll just waste your parents' money on this field.

`Illuminate\Support\Manager::class` is an abstract class that you can inherit from to assist you in constructing your own manager implementation for your drivers. This class only requires you to implement `getDefaultDriver()` method in your own class. Creating drivers can either be by using closure, or declaring a `create{DriverName}Driver` in your manager implementation. One good example of concrete implementation is Laravel's `Illuminate\Hashing\HashManager::class`, which inherits from `Manager::class` and shows you how to manage your drivers. **P.S:** I know, I know! Code to interface not inheritance. First, you can still code to interface while inheriting from this class. Also, this is just an optional approach for creating manager classes, so it's still up to you as a developer.