A feature preview of Sharp 8.

We, at Code 16, are currently developing on the next major version of Sharp for Laravel. Here’s a preview of some new features we’re working on:

Bulk commands

This is a feature we’ve been asked for a long time... The idea is simple: to be able to select multiple instances in a list and to apply a command on them. We tried to keep thing really straightforward for the project code; here’s an example:

class BulkPublishPostsCommand extends EntityCommand
{
    public function label(): ?string
    {
        return 'Publish all selected posts';
    }
 
    public function buildCommandConfig(): void
    {
        $this->configureDescription('Bulk command to publish posts')
            ->configureInstanceSelectionRequired();
    }
 
    public function execute(array $data = []): array
    {
        Post::whereIn('id', $this->selectedIds())
            ->get()
            ->each(fn (Post $post) => $post->update(['state' => 'published']));
 
        return $this->reload();
    }
}

The code needs two small changes to allow bulk selection: - First, add a configureInstanceSelectionRequired() call in the buildCommandConfig() method. - Then, in the execute() method, use the selectedIds() method to get the list of selected instances.

That’s it: Sharp will take this into account and add a “Select” button + checkboxes to pick instances in the list. We've added an alternative configureInstanceSelectionAllowed() to allow commands to be either called with a selection or on the whole (filtered) list, like in v7 and before.

New dashboard layout (sections!)

Dashboards are pretty easy to create in Sharp, but sometimes they are difficult to organize: to tackle this we added a way to define sections, with titles — very much like we already do in Show Pages. Better, Sharp will allow to directly attach to section a command (also already available for Show Pages), and even a filter: we think it can clarify things a lot for the end user.

Here’s an example of a dashboard with sections, and with commands and a filter attached to the second:

The code should look familiar to anyone who already created a Show Page:

class DemoDashboard extends SharpDashboard
{
 
    protected function buildWidgets(WidgetsContainer $widgetsContainer): void
    {
        // [...]
    }
 
    protected function buildDashboardLayout(DashboardLayout $dashboardLayout): void
    {
        $dashboardLayout
            ->addSection('Posts', function (DashboardLayoutSection $section) {
                // [...]
            })
            ->addSection('Stats', function (DashboardLayoutSection $section) {
                $section
                    ->setKey('stats-section')
                    ->addRow(function (DashboardLayoutRow $row) {
                        // [...]
                    });
            });
    }
 
    public function getFilters(): ?array
    {
        return [
            'stats-section' => [
                PeriodRequiredFilter::class,
            ],
        ];
    }
 
    public function getDashboardCommands(): ?array
    {
        return [
            'stats-section' => [
                ExportStatsAsCsvCommand::class,
            ],
        ];
    }
 
    // [...]
}

UI improvements, and more

We also plan to improve the UI of Sharp, mainly regarding the top bar, the user menu and some button positions — but this is too WIP to show anything now.

On the small-but-useful side, we added a way to configure middleware used by Sharp, and a more elegant and quicker syntax to write an Entity List, with its columns and layout defined at the same time. We are planing more goodies, including a big one, but it’s too early to blog about that...

As always, feel free to catch me on twitter for any comment or question on this.