Laravel: Simple Method for Modules

In my day job, I maintain a fairly large-ish Laravel application. It started out as a few separate vanilla PHP web apps, which I consolidated onto Laravel 4, then upgraded to Laravel 5. I’ve added a few new apps to the suite as business needs arose.

In the Laravel 4 version, I used creolab/laravel-modules to, well, modularize, the various apps under one Laravel instance. It worked well with a few gotchas, but the package wasn’t updated for Laravel 5. At that point I looked at a couple other module packages, but in the end decided it was simple enough to add modules to Laravel.

Assume our namespace is “CorpName”.

Add your namespace to composer.json

...
"psr-4": {
    "App\\": "app/",
    "CorpName\\": "app/CorpName/"
}
...

Create a directory structure like the following:

Add your Service Provider to the ‘providers’ array in config/app.php

...
'CorpName\Core\Providers\CorpNameServiceProvider',
...

Create “app/CorpName/Core/Providers/CorpNameServiceProvider.php”:

<?php 
 
namespace CorpName\Core\Providers;
 
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
use CorpName\Core\Bootstrap;
 
/**
 * Load the CorpName Bootstrap helper, which in turn loads the modules.
 * Wired up in app/config/app.php providers array
 */
class CorpNameServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider {
 
    /**
     * Bootstrap the application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function boot()
    {
        $this->app['CorpName']->boot();
    }
 
    /**
     * Register the application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register()
    {
        //
        $this->app->singleton('CorpName', function($app)
        {
            return new Bootstrap($app);
        });     
    }
 
}

Create “app/CorpName/Core/Bootstrap.php”:

<?php
 
namespace CorpName\Core;
 
use Illuminate\Foundation\Application;
 
/**
 * Bootstrap the modules. Called from the ServiceProvider
 */
class Bootstrap
{
  /**
   * IoC
   * @var \Illuminate\Foundation\Application
   */
  protected $app;
 
  public function __construct(Application $app)
  {
    $this->app = $app;
  }
 
  public function boot()
  {
    $this->loadModules();
  }
 
  /**
   * Scan the CorpName/Modules directory for Modules, and load them (routes, views, includes)
   */
  public function loadModules()
  {
    /**
     * @var \Illuminate\Contracts\Filesystem\Filesystem $disk
     */
    $disk = \Storage::disk('modules');
    $modules = $disk->directories();
 
    $modules_path = config('filesystems.disks.modules.root');
 
    foreach ($modules as $module)
    {
      $module_path = $modules_path . '/' . $module;
 
      //register routes
      if($disk->exists("{$module}/routes.php"))
      {
        include $module_path . '/routes.php';
      }
 
      //set up views
      if($disk->exists("{$module}/views"))
      {
        $this->app['view']->addNamespace($module, $module_path . '/views');
      }
 
      //include files
      if($disk->exists("{$module}/includes"))
      {
        $includes = $disk->files("{$module}/includes");
        foreach ($includes as $include)
        {
          if(substr($include, -4) == '.php')
          {
            include_once $modules_path . '/' . $include;
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Note that I’m using a “modules” storage “disk” configured in “config/filesystem.php”:

...
'modules' => [
    'driver' => 'local',
    'root'   => app_path().'/CorpName/Modules',
],
...

And…

That’s basically it. You’ll probably want a routes.php file in each module, and a views directory, but you can structure your Modules as you see fit. If you use migrations, you’ll need to add your module/migrations directory to the autoload classmap in composer.json:

...
"autoload": {
    "classmap": [
        "database",
        "app/CorpName/Modules/ModuleOne/migrations",
        "app/CorpName/Modules/ModuleTwo/migrations",
        "app/CorpName/Modules/ZeeAppModule/migrations"
    ],
...

Also, views can be referenced by module name in your controller and blade templates:

Controller:

...
return view('ModuleOne::index', $this->data);
...

Blade:

...
@extends('ModuleOne::layouts.master')
 
@section('apphead')
  @include('ModuleTwo::partials.head')
@stop
...

This setup has been running in Laravel 5.0 and 5.1 for a year or so without problems. It could probably use some improvements, like caching, but it works as is.