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This book is aimed at anyone who wants to start developing with Laravel Inertia whose main advantage is that we can use Vue components as if they were blade views and with the added advantage of having all the power of Vue together with Laravel.
For those people who want to learn something new, learn about a tool with little documentation and most of it is in English.
For people who want to improve a skill in web development, who want to grow as a developer.
As long as you identify with at least one of the points listed above, this book is for you.
Creating modern web applications has never been so accessible. When I first discovered Laravel Inertia, I realized I could forget about the unnecessary complexity typical of the Laravel + REST API + Vue combo.
Inertia proposes another way: faster, more natural, and above all, more fun. In this guide, I'm going to tell you exactly how it works, why I use it in my projects, and how you can build your first SPAs without struggling with extra configuration.
This is a book in which we'll take the first steps with Laravel Inertia, learn how we can use Vue directly from Laravel, without annoying intermediates, therefore instead of using views with Blade, we use components in Vue.
I also have free resources for the book on the Blog and the community/FREE course on the Academy website.
What is Laravel Inertia and why does it matter today?
A layer that simplifies the Laravel + Vue schema
Inertia is not a framework —and that's the first thing you need to remember— but a layer that acts as a bridge between Laravel and your Vue frontend. In my projects, I always say that Inertia "disappears," because it acts so much as an intermediary that it allows you to work as if Laravel and Vue were the same thing.
When I took my first steps, the feeling was almost magical: "Seriously, I don't have to set up a REST API to communicate the server with the components?" That's right, you don't need it.
How your flow changes if you come from Blade
If you come from Blade (like I did at first), prepare for a mental shift:
views become Vue components, but you still keep the classic structure of Laravel controllers, routes, and middlewares. The difference is that the controller doesn't return a view, but a component with props.
In my projects, I immediately noticed how useful it was to have all the backend logic intact, but with a reactive and modern Vue frontend without having to configure anything else.
When to choose Inertia instead of other solutions
I'd say Inertia is ideal when:
- You already work with Laravel and want an SPA without creating a complete API.
- You need development speed.
- You want to use Vue (or React, if you ever get up the courage).
- You are looking for a simple, direct workflow without unnecessary layers.
Real advantages of working with Inertia in modern projects
- Less complexity than a classic REST API
- You don't have to create endpoints, separate API controllers, or double validations.
That, for me, was one of the main reasons for adopting it in production.
- You don't have to create endpoints, separate API controllers, or double validations.
- Greater development and maintenance speed
- When I built my first applications with Inertia, I noticed that I could advance almost twice as fast as using traditional APIs. Not having to think about state synchronization with the backend makes a huge difference.
- How it feels to work with Inertia in real projects
- The experience is clean, fluid, and very similar to the Vue you already know.
What is Laravel Inertia?
This guide offers multiple tutorials based on small applications with limited scope in which we will learn in detail how Laravel Inertia works, we will make comparisons with the Laravel Livewire book, which is a sibling to this book, and compare technologies.
With this type of integration, which sounds minor but greatly facilitates development and maximizes project elaboration time, there's no need to use axios, fetch, or similar requests since the structure or scaffolding that Inertia brings takes care of everything; bringing a world of infinite possibilities and rapid development compared to other similar solutions with the classic schema of:
Laravel + Rest Api + Vue
Since this book is intermediate level, it assumes you have basic knowledge of Laravel.
Ultimately, you will learn about Laravel Inertia, what changes it brings to a basic Laravel project, the use of Vue components as the main feature, and much more.
Foreword
Laravel is a fascinating framework, huge and with a somewhat steep learning curve and with multiple options; this book is not for beginners and assumes that you already know how to program in Laravel.
Laravel Inertia takes Laravel development one step further; automating routine processes in very flexible schemes based on components, the components in Vue, which come to replace Laravel's blade views and with them, we can communicate client and server in a very simple, efficient and easy way.
Laravel Inertia is not a framework, it is just a layer or scaffolding that adds certain extra features to the framework that we can use to create great applications, with less effort and development time.
Who is this book for
This book is aimed at anyone who wants to start developing with Laravel Inertia whose main advantage is that, we can use Vue components, as if they were blade views and with the added advantage of having all the power of Vue together with Laravel.
This book is not recommended for those people who have not worked with basic Laravel or without any addition, if this is your case, I advise you to first know and practice with Laravel before starting; on my website you will find courses, books, publications, videos and in general more information about Laravel.
For those people who want to learn something new, learn about a tool with little documentation and most of it is in English.
For people who want to improve a skill in web development, who want to grow as a developer.
As long as you identify with at least one of the points mentioned above, this book is for you.
Topics of the book
This book has a total of 17 chapters, it is recommended that you read in the order in which they are arranged and as we explain the components of the framework, go directly to practice, replicate, test and modify the codes that we show in this book.
- Chapter 1: In this chapter we will learn about the Laravel Inertia tool and what it offers us when developing web applications.
- Chapter 2: In this chapter we are going to create a project in Laravel Inertia.
- Chapter 3: In this chapter we are going to know the characteristics of a project in Laravel Inertia, both the structure that a project brings by default, and its basic operation.
- Chapter 4: In this chapter we are going to create the typical CRUD to learn the basics of Laravel Inertia and its communication with components in Vue.
- Chapter 5: In this chapter we are going to learn about the use of redirects and flash messages.
- Chapter 6: In this chapter we are going to create the CRUD process for the posts, taking all the topics covered in the previous chapters.
- Chapter 7: In this chapter we will learn about the upload process in Laravel Inertia and using third-party plugins.
- Chapter 8: In this chapter we are going to install third-party plugins using Vue, specifically, the CKEditor plugin.
- Chapter 9: In this chapter we are going to know the confirmation dialogs and toast messages of Laravel Inertia and using third-party plugins.
- Chapter 10: In this chapter we are going to know the communication between components of components used directly from Laravel, for that, we will create a form step by step.
- Chapter 11: In this chapter we are going to implement filters and a search field for a list from the administration module.
- Chapter 12: In this chapter we are going to implement the ordering of columns of a table in a list from the administration module.
- Chapter 13: In this chapter we are going to create the end user view blog module, a listing and detail page.
- Chapter 14: In this chapter we are going to create a shopping cart, which includes the typical CRUD and screens.
- Chapter 15: In this chapter we are going to explain some essential options that we can use when sending requests through the Inertia object.
- Chapter 16: In this chapter we are going to create a CRUD type to do list application with reordering via Drag and Drop.
- Chapter 17: We will learn how to create unit and integration tests in the application we created previously using PHPUnit.
The book is currently in development…