Ash Allen

Thanks Ludo! That really means a lot 😄

Reduce Duplicate Cache Queries in Laravel with "Cache::memo()" Learn about how to use the "Cache::memo()" method to memoise cache values and improve performance in your Laravel applications.

Reduce Duplicate Cache Queries in Laravel with "Cache::memo()" 🚀

ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/laravel...

How to Send Telegram Messages in Laravel | Laravel.io The Laravel portal for problem solving, knowledge sharing and community building.

How to Send Telegram Messages in Laravel by @ashallendesign.co.uk

https://laravel.io/articles/how-to-send-telegram-messages-in-laravel

Memoisation in Laravel Using the "once" Helper | Laravel.io The Laravel portal for problem solving, knowledge sharing and community building.

Memoisation in Laravel Using the "once" Helper by @ashallendesign.co.uk

https://laravel.io/articles/memoisation-in-laravel-using-the-once-helper

How to Send Telegram Messages in Laravel In this article, we'll look at how to send Telegram messages from a Laravel application using the "laravel-notification-channels/telegram" package. We'll also look at the different types of Telegram m...

How to Send Telegram Messages in Laravel 🚀

ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/laravel...

Memoisation in Laravel Using the "once" Helper In this article, we'll discuss how to use the "once" helper in Laravel to memoise data. We'll also look at how the "once" helper works with Laravel Octane applications and alternative approaches you c...

Memoisation in Laravel Using the "once" Helper 🚀

ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/laravel...

⚡ You can use the "once" helper to memoise data in Laravel!

The result of the closure will be stored on the first call. Then all future calls will return the stored result.

When used in the right places, this can lead to some nice performance gains.

I've just finished writing an article about memoisation in Laravel which covers:

👉 Using the "once" helper
👉 Using "once" in methods and static methods
👉 How "once" is handled in Octane apps
👉 Alternatives to "once"

Hoping to publish it on Monday 😄

My latest freelance contract has just come to an end this week.

So I'm now available to take on new Laravel projects/work!

If you're on the lookout for a Laravel dev with plenty of experience, feel free to give me a shout! 😎

Nice! 😄

Nice! I think I install those 3 first too 😄

What's the first package you install when you start a new Laravel project?

For me, it's usually Rector or PHPStan 😄

Building a Laravel Feature with Junie in PhpStorm YouTube video by Ash Allen

Building a Laravel Feature with Junie in PhpStorm 🚀

P.s. - Please excuse the poor audio quality. I only realised during editing that I'd been using my Mac's mic rather than my actual mic. Ooops haha!

youtu.be/9HYYpuu_nXc?...

How AI Will Impact My Job as a Freelance Web Developer in 2026 Read my opinions about how I think AI will impact my job as a freelance web developer and content creator in 2026. I discuss how I'm currently using AI in my workflow and how I think that might change...

How AI Will Impact My Job as a Freelance Web Developer in 2026 🚀

ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/web-dev...

Immutable and Mutable Dates in PHP Read about the difference between immutable and mutable dates in PHP. We'll also look at a common gotcha I've experienced when using mutable dates and how to avoid it.

Yeah, I always stick to DateTimeImmutable and CarbonImmutable now whenever I'm working with dates. So much safer!

If anyone else is reading this and wants to know the difference between the mutable and immutable versions, I've got an article covering it 😄

ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/php-dates

🔥 If you're using job batches in Laravel, the "job_batches" database table can grow quite quickly.

To solve this, you can schedule the "queue:prune-batches" command.

I've just added this to @findapr after I noticed the table contained a ton of old rows (approx 28k rows) 😄

No, you're right, the answer's 2026-01-02. But I always used to forget that DateTime and Carbon were both mutable. In the past, I'd have guessed that the answer was 2026-01-01 haha! So it caught me out more times than I'd like to admit 😂

Fun little quiz:

Without cheating, what will the last line output in PHP?

This is something which used to catch me out all the time! 👀

Formatting PHP Code with PHP CS Fixer | Laravel.io The Laravel portal for problem solving, knowledge sharing and community building.

Formatting PHP Code with PHP CS Fixer by @ashallendesign.co.uk

https://laravel.io/articles/formatting-php-code-with-php-cs-fixer

Formatting PHP Code with PHP CS Fixer Read about how to use PHP CS Fixer to automate the formatting of your PHP code. We'll also explore how to use PHP CS Fixer in parallel mode and create a GitHub Actions workflow which checks the code s...

Formatting PHP Code with PHP CS Fixer 🚀

ashallendesign.co.uk/blog/php-cs-...

Thanks Karl! 😄

Nice! 🔥

What level do you run PHPStan at in your projects?

I've personally found level 5 or 6 to be the sweet spot (especially when adding it to existing projects) 😄

I've just hit a mini-milestone with my Email Utilities package:

It's crossed 100 stars on GitHub! ⭐

It's really close to hitting its first 1,000 downloads, too. I've just checked and it's been installed 995 times 👀

Release v1.1.0 · ash-jc-allen/email-utilities What's Changed Added an email-utilities:fetch-disposable-domains Artisan command to fetch the latest disposable email domains list by @onlime and @ash-jc-allen in #12 and #20 Added a static cache ...

Huge thank you to Philip Lezzi for your contributions and help with this release. I really appreciate it!

Release notes: github.com/ash-jc-allen...

[2/2]

I've just released Email Utilities for Laravel v1.1.0! 🎉

This release includes:

✅ Artisan command that can be used to update the disposable domain list (shown in the screenshot)
✅ Caching to improve performance
✅ An updated list of disposable domains (4932 domains!)

[1/2]

The PR didn't get merged!

But I'm planning on writing an article soon to show how you can use Mailtrap for:

👉 Sending single emails in Laravel
👉 Sending bulk emails in Laravel
👉 Testing Laravel emails using Mailtrap sandboxes

Aiming to publish it next week 😄

I've just made a PR to Laravel to propose first-party support for sending transactional email with Mailtrap!

Is this something you might use? 😄

👉 PR: github.com/laravel/fram...

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it 😄

The Difference Between ?: and ?? in PHP | Laravel.io The Laravel portal for problem solving, knowledge sharing and community building.

The Difference Between ?: and ?? in PHP by @ashallendesign.co.uk

https://laravel.io/articles/the-difference-between-and-in-php