In this article, we'll be looking at awesome vscode extensions for PHP/Laravel developers.

VSCODE

Vscode is a free open-source text editing tool by Microsoft with support for developing applications using different programming languages. It has built-in Git functionality.

Install extensions to add new languages, themes, debuggers, and to connect to additional services. Extensions run in separate processes, ensuring they won't slow down your editor.

It has a desktop app for Windows, Linux and macOS. Find out more about Vscode

Vscode is one of the best editors a developer should've.

The following are a few amongst many extensions out there to smoothen your development experience in building Laravel apps.

Laravel Extension Pack

Laravel Extension Pack

This is one of the finest Laravel Vscode extensions with 13 extensions all in one (collection of Vscode extensions)

The Laravel blade snippet, dotEnv, Laravel artisan, go to view, go to controller, Laravel extra IntelliSense, PHP debug, PHP IntelliSense, editor config for VScode, are added automatically when the Laravel extensions package is installed.

The laravel blade snippet

Features

• Blade syntax highlight

• Blade snippets using the @ symbol to access the list of blade snippet

• Blade formatting

Demo

Laravel Snippets

Snippet prefix follows Laravel Facades. For example: Request::, Route::

Support Snippet Prefix

• Arr

• Auth

• Broadcast

• Cache

• Config etc...

DotENV - .env Extension

DotEnvExtension has support for highligting .env variables and values

Laravel artisan

With this extension, we can run Laravel commands within vscode and also suggest the list of Laravel commands in a situation where a developer is not able to recall the command name.

Demo

Go to view

With this extension, a developer can easily navigate to a file from within the code snippets by holding the ctrl key plus click on Windows.

Demo

Go to controller

Alt + click to navigate from a route to a respective controller file.

Demo

Laravel Extra Intellisense

Features

• Autocomplete

• Route names and route parameters

• Views and variables

• Configs

• Translations and translation parameters

• Laravel mix function

• Validation rules

• View sections and stacks

• Env

• Route Middlewares

• Asset

• Model Attributes (Beta!)

• Blade directives

Demo

Laravel Blade Wrapper

An extension to wrap Blade directives. You can embed a particular code section into the blade directives. For example, highlight the text and press Ctrl + Shift + P to open the command palette on Windows and type the @ to search for an blade directive you want wrap this code with.

<h1>Some text</h1>

Outcome

    @foreach ($collection as $item) 
        <h1>Some text</h1>
    @endforeach

PHP Namespace Resolver

PHP Namespace Resolver can import and expand your class. You can also sort your imported classes by line length or in alphabetical order.

Demo

Vscode Icons

Add beautiful custom icons to folders on the directory. Just some fancy stuff and ease to identify the content of a particular folder.

Demo

Error Lens

Features

• Highlight lines containing diagnostics

• Append diagnostic as text to the end of the line

• Show icons in gutter

• Show message in status bar

Depending on your project setup preference you can install any of the following extensions:

• Better PHPUnit by calebporzio: the most popular, cleanest, and fastest PHPUnit runner for VS Code.

• Tailwindcss intellisense by Tailwind Labs tailwindcss.com

• Bootstrap (Bootstrap 5 Quick Snippets by Anbuselvan Rocky or Bootstrap 4, Font awesome 4, Font Awesome 5 Free & Pro snippets by Ashok Koyi)

• Javascript: JavaScript (ES6) code snippets by charalampos karypidis

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