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Distribution: The Only Moat Left? SaaS 2.0, Laravel 12.20, Software In The Era Of AI & more

Author

Ahmad
July 20, 2025

Hey Makers 👋

Hope you're staying cool and productive—whether you're deep in code or just enjoying some well-earned summer slowdown. 🏖️

Laravel quietly dropped v12.20 this week, and it’s packed with smart little features: from customizable pluck() logic to a handy Context::remember() method, and even new queue exception handling improvements. Clean, powerful additions that make your life easier. 🧰

Let’s dive deeper into those! 👇

  • Context::remember(): A cleaner way to cache values in context. Instead of checking and setting manually, you can now just use: 

// Before
if (Context::has('user-permissions')) {
    $permissions = Context::get('user-permissions');
} else {
    $permissions = auth()->user()->permissions;
    Context::set('user-permissions', $permissions);
}
 
// After
$permissions = Context::remember('user-permissions', fn() => auth()->user()->permissions)

  • New String Helpers: Str::doesntStartWith() and Str::doesntEndWith() make it easier to check for non-matching prefixes/suffixes: 

use Illuminate\Support\Str;

Str::doesntStartWith('Laravel Rocks', 'Symfony');     // true
Str::doesntEndWith('Laravel Rocks', ['PHP', 'Rocks']); // false

  • Queue Throttling Upgrade: You can now use failWhen() in ThrottlesExceptions to mark jobs as failed (instead of deleting them) under specific conditions. 

public function middleware(): array
{
    return [
        (new ThrottlesExceptions(3, 600))
            ->deleteWhen(SpecificException::class)
            ->failWhen(fn(Throwable $e) => $e instanceof ValidationException),
    ];
}

  • Queue::fakeFor() & fakeExceptFor(): Scoped and selective job faking now possible — no more global fakes lingering around your test cases.

  • Pluck with Closures: The beloved pluck() now supports closures for dynamic key-value pairs: 

Country::all()->pluck(
    fn($c) => "{$c->emoji} {$c->name}",
    fn($c) => $c->code
);

  • Iterable Fluent: Fluent objects now work directly in foreach loops — no need to call toArray() anymore. 

// before
foreach ($user->orders->toArray() as $key => $value) {
    // ...
}

// after
foreach ($user->orders as $key => $value) {
    // ...
}

  • @context Blade Directive: Blade got smarter with @context, making it easier to conditionally render based on context values.

  • Config::collection(): Fetch config values directly as a collection with Config::collection('some.key').

  • Uri is JSON-ready: The Uri class now serializes nicely when returned in JSON responses.

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