Sharp 8 for Laravel is here.

Sharp for Laravel just hit version 8, bringing two very good news: a lot of new features, and few breaking changes. In this post, I would like to quickly present the main new features.

Bulk commands

I've already written about this one in a previous post, since it was on of the features that was requested for a long time. Truth is we thought it was an unnecessary one because command scoping was already a thing, through filters, but I must admit now it brings a lot of clarity to the user — along with more control.

Implementation is quite easy, here's the full code corresponding to the video above (as always, remember that all these examples are taken from the online demo of Sharp, which is of course open source):

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())
            ->where('state', 'draft')
            ->get()
            ->each(fn (Post $post) => $post->update(['state' => 'online']));
 
        $this->notify('All selected posts were published!');
 
        return $this->reload();
    }
}

You may have spotted another bonus brought by v8: the ability to add toast notifications to commands.

Global search

In some of our projects we felt the need to provide a way to quickly search for an instance of an important entity: it can be orders in an e-commerce app, or customers in a CRM for instance. For this, we added a way to define a global search, accessible from the top bar:

Since it's Sharp, you have full control on how to build the search results. Here's a (naive) implementation example:

class AppSearchEngine extends SharpSearchEngine
{
    public function searchFor(array $terms): void
    {
        $this->searchForPosts($terms);
        $this->searchForAuthors($terms);
    }
 
    private function searchForPosts(array $terms): void
    {
        $resultSet = $this
            ->addResultSet(
                label: 'Posts',
                icon: 'fa-file-o',
            )
            ->setEmptyStateLabel('No post found');
 
        if (! $resultSet->validateSearch(['min:3'], ['min' => 'Enter at least 3 characters'])) {
            return;
        }
 
        $builder = Post::query()
            ->with('author');
 
        foreach ($terms as $term) {
            $builder->where('title->en', 'like', $term);
        }
 
        $builder
            ->limit(10)
            ->get()
            ->each(function (Post $post) use ($resultSet) {
                $resultSet->addResultLink(
                    link: LinkToShowPage::make('posts', $post->id),
                    label: $post->title,
                    detail: $post->author->name,
                );
            });
    }
 
    private function searchForAuthors(array $terms): void
    {
        // [...]
    }
}

This code is quite simple, but we leverage some cool features: we added different result sets, manage their empty state, and even validate the search terms; each result can be linked to a Show Page, a filtered Entity List, or any Sharp URL using LinkTo classes which were enhanced in v8 as well.

New login workflow with 2FA

This is the result of a complete refactoring of the login workflow, which brings cool stuff like rate limiting, and more importantly a solid staring point to implement a full and configurable two-factor authentication system, that could rely on notification (SMS, email...) or authenticator apps (TOTP).

For TOTP, Sharp can provide a way to allow users to register their authenticator app:

And then when login they will be asked to provide the code generated by the app:

I think I'll write a dedicated post about this, but in the meantime you can check the documentation to see how to implement it, and browse the code of the demo app to see how it's done in a simple case.

Dashboard: sections and Figure widget

I already showcased this one in the previous post, but there are some improvement to mention: we added a way to define sections with titles in dashboards, and to attach commands and filter to them. We also developed a new widget, Figure:

All of this is properly documented, and you can experiment it in the demo.

Better documentation

Talking about documentation, we made a big effort to improve it, rewriting sections and adding context, schemas and screenshots; even if there is still room for more work I think it's now a lot better.

Since this is a topic where open source can be really helpful, feel free to open PRs if you find pages which can be improved.

Lots of DX improvements

Let's make a list:

• new way to build EntityList layout (see migration guide)
• easier way to declare an embedded Entity List (2nd arg, entity key, is now optional, since it's often the same one)
• add SimpleEloquentReorderHandler default reorder implementation
• new methods to build LinkToShow and LinkToForm links with a custom breadcrumb
• allow middleware declaration in config
• allow to define upload (tmp) disk in configuration

UI / UX refresh

I kept this one for the end of the post, but it was spoiled by screenshots and videos above: we refreshed the UI and the UX, with some pretty big changes:

• The top bar has been cleaned of all its buttons/actions, and the user menu has been moved inside.
• With Show Page generalization, we finally moved the "delete" action out of the Form (and this is the main breaking change, see migration guide).
• Filters and search of the Entity List were moved to its top section.
• Buttons of the Form were moved to its bottom section.
• Lowercase everywhere.
• and much more: go test the demo app to feel the difference.

What's next?

Sharp is very much in our plans for the future, and the v9 is already in the works; it should be an ambitious technical release, without new features, but I'll talk about it in a future post.

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