If you’re a Laravel developer and you’re not using these following Visual Studio Code extensions, I highly suggest you start using them. What developer doesn’t want to boost their productivity by installing four free extensions? Let’s get into it…
Laravel goto view/controller
I’m already cheating here as this section contains two extensions. However, you wouldn’t be getting your times worth if I were to make two sections out of these. They practically do the same thing. The first extension I’d like to mention is called “Laravel goto view” by codingyu. (Click on the link to visit his or her GitHub profile). The other one is called “laravel-goto-controller” by stef-k. There are a few extensions on the VSCode market for Laravel that do the same thing but these are the ones I use and they work great. They do exactly as their names suggest. While hovering over the view you want to visit, simply hold down CTRL and left click on the view. See below:
Just like that. Not only are you a coding wizard but a teleportation wizard too. You can do the exact same thing with controllers but with the other extension:
Laravel docs
This may be my favorite one. Gone are the days where you use a search engine to look up something specific in the Laravel documentation. You have your own built-in search engine for VSCode! For super speed, hold down CTRL and press p to bring up the search feature in VSCode. Then, start typing in the ‘laravel’ keyword and anything you could ever want from the Laravel docs is now one click away. Check out this beaut by Austen Cameron. Excuse my slow wifi:
Laravel Blade Spacer
This is the only auto-completion extension I wanted to include on the list as I know the majority of you developers probably already have these types of extensions. I had to include this one though as manually typing in double mustache syntax (or whatever you call it) is finicky as hell. This add-on by Austen Cameron (yep him again) removes that brief stress of getting your fingers tangled up on the keyboard while trying to echo or import something. Take a look:
The following is without using this extension:
Laravel Helpers
Finally, we have “Laravel Helpers” by rafa-acioly. This add-on is especially useful if you’re just learning Laravel, as just like Laravel Docs, it saves you from having to enter your browser and typing something in. Simply type the function you want to use and a brief description about what the function does will pop up. It is brief and it may not explain everything you want to know about it but it’s helpful nonetheless. Have a gander:
Honorable Mentions
Laravel blade snippets
This may not even be worth mentioning as it’s so popular and necessary that I forgot it was even an extension. I downloaded it when I first started learning Laravel with Brad Traversy’s “Laravel From Scratch” series. It pretty much provides syntax highlighting and auto-completion for Laravel Blade syntax. A must have. Though, I’d wager that most people reading this post already have this installed. Hence, why I left it out of the main list. The publisher’s name is Winnie Lin.
Laravel Artisan
A cool extension but I can’t stomach leaving the command line to use this instead. Even though it would be a fraction quicker. With “Laravel Artisan” by Ryan Naddy, you can enter Artisan commands through VSCode’s search bar. Pretty neat.
