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Getting Started with Laravel Livewire: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

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Umesh Rana
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5 min read

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In web development, creating dynamic and interactive web applications usually involves complex JavaScript frameworks and libraries. But what if there was a way to create feature-rich web apps with minimal JavaScript and a more intuitive development experience? That’s where Laravel Livewire comes into play. The Laravel Livewire is a powerful package for Laravel. It offers an elegant solution that allows you to build feature-rich web apps with minimal JavaScript. This provides a delightful development experience in web applications. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore what Laravel Livewire is, its key features, and how to get started with it.

What is Laravel Livewire?

The first question that comes to mind is What is Livewire? So, let’s come to the quickest answer for it. Livewire is an open-source library for Laravel. It simplifies the process of building dynamic web interfaces without writing a lot of JavaScript code. With Livewire, you can create interactive components in Laravel applications using only PHP and Blade templates.

Key Features of Laravel Livewire

Now, let’s take a look at the important features of Livewire. So, that we can get to know why we can use Livewire. These are the following:

Reactive Components

The Livewire introduces the concept of reactive components. These are PHP classes that represent a part of your web page and include both the view (Blade template) and the logic. Livewire makes it easy to bind data and actions to the component. So changes to the component’s state automatically trigger updates in the browser.

No JavaScript Framework Required

One of the most significant advantages of using Livewire is that it reduces the reliance on JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue.js, Angular, etc. While these frameworks are powerful, they can introduce complexity and a steep learning curve. However, Livewire allows you to create interactive features with PHP and Laravel’s Blade templating engine.

Real-Time Validation and Error Handling

The next amazing feature of Livewire is Real-time validation for form fields. Yes, this provides real-time form validation and error handling. You can validate user input as they type, making the form-filling experience smooth and user-friendly. Also, the error messages are displayed instantly. So it provides immediate feedback to users in terms of any validation errors.

Lifecycle Hooks

Livewire components have lifecycle hooks that allow you to define actions that should occur at different stages of a component’s lifecycle. For example, you can perform actions when a component is initialized, updated, or removed from the DOM.

Server-Side Rendering

With Livewire, the rendering happens on the server side. So, it helps in reducing the amount of JavaScript required on the client side. This can lead to faster initial page loads and better SEO performance.

These are the important features of Livewire. However, we will work on these in our upcoming posts. For now, let’s quickly dive into the installation and kickstart with Laravel Livewire.

Getting Started with Livewire in Laravel 10

Now that we’ve covered the key features of Livewire. Therefore, let’s dive into how to get started with Laravel Livewire.

Prerequisites

Before we dive into the hands-on part, ensure you have the following prerequisites in place:

  • A basic understanding of PHP and Laravel.

  • A Laravel project up and running. If you don’t have one, you can create a new project using Composer.

Step 1 – Create a Laravel Project For Livewire Setup

To create the Laravel project, simply open the terminal and play with the below command.

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel laravel-livewire-app

I am assuming you are ready with the Laravel project. Hence, I am moving to the next step of installation of Livewire.

Step 2 – Installing Laravel Livewire

Navigate to the project folder. Now, let’s get Livewire installed in your Laravel project. Open your terminal and run the following command:

composer require livewire/livewire

This command will download and install the Livewire package into your Laravel project.

After the successful installation of Livewire, you will have to import it’s style and script in your blade file.

Step 3 – Import Livewire Styles and Scripts

In order to use Livewire, you will have to import it in your main blade file or wherever you want in your Laravel project.

Here, I am going to create a master blade for it. So that I can use it globally across all the other views in our project. It totally depends on your project if you don’t want to import it globally in the master layout then you can import it in any single blade file as well.

So, the livewireStyles will go between the head tag and the livewireScripts will go before closing the body in your blade file.

Take a look at the below syntax.

<!doctype html>
<head>
 ....
 .... 
 @livewireStyles
</head>
<body>
   ....
   ....
   ....
@livewireScrips
</body>
</html>

So, after creating the blade file as master.blade.php. I have imported the styles and scripts of the Livewire as shown below.

master.blade.php<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <title>Kickstart of Laravel Livewire</title>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">

  <!-- Other CSS Libraries or import -->
  ....
  ....

  <!-- Livewire Styles -->
    @livewireStyles

</head>

<body>
  <main class="pt-3 px-5">
      @yield('content')
  </main>

  <!-- Other JavaScript Libraries and Scripts -->
   ....
   ....

  <!-- Livewire Scripts -->
  @livewireScripts

</body>

</html>

Now, link this blade with any of your routes and run your application to see the changes. For that, you will have to click on the page source by right-clicking in the browser.

In the head section, you will notice that Livewire has added some styles over there.

Read the full article here.
https://programmingfields.com/getting-started-with-laravel-livewire-a-comprehensive-guide-for-beginners/

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