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- Laravel 12.42-43, PhpStorm 2025.3 With Native Laravel Support, Optimistic UI Tricks for Livewire and Alpine, Vibe Coding Won’t Kill SaaS, I Survived 2025 & more
Laravel 12.42-43, PhpStorm 2025.3 With Native Laravel Support, Optimistic UI Tricks for Livewire and Alpine, Vibe Coding Won’t Kill SaaS, I Survived 2025 & more
Ahmad
December 21, 2025
Hey Makers 👋🎄
It’s Christmas time — things are slowing down, inboxes are quieter… but Laravel clearly didn’t get the memo. We’ve just seen two new Laravel releases land, packed with improvements that keep the ecosystem moving fast, even during the holidays.
On the SaaSykit side, there’s a holiday deal running right now:
20% off SaaSykit Complete with the code CHEERS25.
This also marks the end of the discount season for SaaSykit, so if you’ve been waiting, this is your last chance to grab it at a reduced price.
Alright — let’s take a look at what’s new in Laravel 👇
Laravel 12.42-43 updates
HTTP Client: Request Attributes
You can now attach arbitrary metadata to an HTTP request using
withAttributes()and read it back from the response later. This is useful for tracing, debugging, or passing context through the request lifecycle.
$response = Http::withAttributes(['source' => 'newsletter'])
->post('https://api.example.com/ping');
$response->attributes(); // ['source' => 'newsletter']Enums Supported in Translator Replacements
Translator placeholders now accept PHP Enums directly. Backed enums will automatically resolve to their string value when used in translations.
__('release_message', ['month' => ReleaseMonth::March]);
// "The release shipped in March"Schema Builder: Conditional Index Helpers
New schema helpers let you run migrations conditionally based on whether an index exists, removing manual
hasIndex()checks.
Schema::whenTableDoesntHaveIndex('orders', 'status', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->index('status');
});Eloquent Collections: mergeHidden() & mergeVisible()
You can now adjust hidden or visible attributes across an entire Eloquent collection in one call.
$users = User::active()->get();
$users->mergeHidden(['password'])
->mergeVisible(['last_login_at']);HTTP Client Responses Are Now Macroable
The HTTP client
Responseclass supports macros, making it easier to add reusable response helpers.
Response::macro('summary', function () {
return $this->collect()->only(['title', 'year', 'rating']);
});
Http::get($url)->summary();Conditional afterResponse() Job Dispatching
The
afterResponse()method now accepts a boolean, allowing cleaner conditional dispatch logic.
ProcessReport::dispatch($payload)
->afterResponse(app()->isProduction());Storage::fake() Accepts Enum Disk Names
You can now pass disk enums directly to
Storage::fake(), matching the behavior ofStorage::disk().
Storage::fake(Disk::Public);New Test Assertion: assertFailedDependency()
A dedicated test helper was added for asserting HTTP 424 (Failed Dependency) responses.
$response->assertFailedDependency();
From SaaSykit
When you start a new Laravel project, the first question is often the same:
Should I use a starter kit… and if so, which one?
Laravel offers great starter kits. They give you authentication, simple scaffolding, and a clean starting point for your projects.
On the other hand, SaaSykit was built specifically for developers who want to launch real SaaS products fast, stable, and with modern SaaS expectations already handled. It’s a feature-rich, production-ready foundation packed with everything a modern SaaS needs.
From the Community
PhpStorm 2025.3 is out, and this release comes with native Claude Agent integration, out-of-the-box Laravel support, support for PHP 8.5, improvements in generics, a new Islands theme, and more.
With this release, Laravel developers now get first class framework support without installing extra plugins or paying for add ons because they brought the Laravel Idea plugin into the core of the product.
Many applications begin their lives built on SQL databases like PostgreSQL or MySQL. For years, they serve their purpose well, until they don't anymore. Maybe the team starts hitting scalability limits, or the rigid schema becomes a bottleneck as the product evolves faster than anticipated. Perhaps the business now deals with semi-structured data that fits awkwardly into normalized tables. Whatever the reason, more and more teams find themselves exploring MongoDB as an alternative or complement to their SQL infrastructure.
Laravel is a powerful and feature-rich PHP web application framework that provides numerous built-in functions, making it easier for developers to build and maintain their applications. While Laravel's official documentation covers many of its features, some lesser-known functions can be incredibly helpful in certain situations. In this article, we'll uncover some of these hidden gems and provide usage examples to help you make the most of Laravel's extensive capabilities.
There's been a lot of debate in the last few weeks on the merits of building web apps with HTML-over-the-wire vs. using popular JavaScript libraries like Vue and React, and how that choice affects the experiences of end users and developers.
Way back in Security Tip #6 I wrote about manually disabling debug and testing Artisan commands from running in production (or staging) using something like this…
All about SaaS
I really want to clean up a little bit when it comes to vibe coding and software as a service businesses, because I think there’s a lot of confusion, a lot of hype, and a lot of complaints about the imminent demise of software as a service solutions.
It was a big year for consumer launches from the major AI labs. OpenAI shipped dozens of AI features – including GPT-4o Image, the standalone Sora app, and group chats. Gemini released several insanely viral image and video generation models (Nano Banana and Veo). Other labs like Anthropic, Perplexity, xAI, and Meta all released new consumer-facing tools across things like chat, coding, search, image generation, and more. The result? Somewhat of a mixed bag.
Lovable just announced its $300M Series B at $6.6B Valuation.
Their growth is something unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and to be honest I’m just so pumped to see what’s next for them.
In 2009, Amazon’s leadership team noticed an unmistakable trend in their monthly business reviews (MBR). Mobile traffic to Amazon’s websites was increasing rapidly and, if the trend continued, would one day overtake desktop traffic (it eventually did in 2016).
I have survived another year of self-employment! Business has changed over that time. Gone are the days I can freely share a neat case study online. Clients demand confidentiality. I front-end develop and I refuse to prompt and everything else is a secret!
“The disease you have to fight in any creative field,” says the musician Jack White, is “ease of use.”
Though White asserted this in 2008, today’s AI startups and stalwarts touting creative democratization might take heed. His insight is that creativity is fluid—and aligned with difficulty. When technology changes what’s difficult, what’s creative changes too.
Software. From the up-and-coming disruptor to the dominant world-order to, very quickly, being on the chopping block of disruption. Predictions about the death of software are around every corner. But we believe the rumors of the death of software are greatly exaggerated. In our latest piece, we unpack the history of software’s evolution from monolithic code bases to modular building blocks, and finally arrive at how AI could unlock the age of composable software.
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Keep building, keep rocking! 🤘