Book Image

Laravel Application Development Cookbook

By : Terry Matula
Book Image

Laravel Application Development Cookbook

By: Terry Matula

Overview of this book

When creating a web application, there are many PHP frameworks from which to choose. Some are very easy to set up, and some have a much steeper learning curve. Laravel offers both paths. You can do a quick installation and have your app up-and-running in no time, or you can use Laravel's extensibility to create an advanced and fully-featured app.Laravel Application Development Cookbook provides you with working code examples for many of the common problems that web developers face. In the process, it will also allow both new and existing Laravel users to expand their knowledge of the framework.This book will walk you through all aspects of Laravel development. It begins with basic set up and installation procedures, and continues through more advanced use cases. You will also learn about all the helpful features that Laravel provides to make your development quick and easy. For more advanced needs, you will also see how to utilize Laravel's authentication features and how to create a RESTful API.In the Laravel Application Development Cookbook, you will learn everything you need to know about a great PHP framework, with working code that will get you up-and-running in no time.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Laravel Application Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Gathering e-mail addresses and using them with a third-party e-mail service


E-mail lists and newsletters are still a popular and efficient way to communicate with large groups of people. In this recipe, we'll use Laravel and the free MailChimp service to set up an easy way to gather e-mail subscriptions.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we'll need a working Laravel 4 installation, as well as a free account with http://mailchimp.com/ and generated API keys in Mailchimp's account section. We'll also need to create at least one list in Mailchimp.

How to do it...

To complete this recipe, follow these steps:

  1. In the app directory, create a new directory named libraries.

  2. Download Mailchimp's API library from http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/downloads/#php, then unzip it and place the file MCAPI.class.php in the new libraries folder.

  3. Open Laravel's composer.json file and add the libraries directory to the autoload section. That section should resemble the following snippet:

    "autoload": {
        "classmap": ...