Laravel Expert — Gotchas & Decisions

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Key Decisions

decisions[4]{choice,use_when}:
  Form Request vs inline,"Form Request for reusable validation. Inline for one-off simple checks"
  Service vs Action class,"Service for stateless business logic. Action (single __invoke) for discrete operations"
  Event/Listener vs direct,"Events for decoupling (notifications/logging). Direct for tightly coupled ops"
  Eloquent vs Query Builder,"Eloquent for domain models with relationships. Query Builder for reports/bulk ops"

Gotchas

• N+1: always with() eager load. Use preventLazyLoading() in AppServiceProvider to catch in dev
• readonly DTOs (PHP 8.2+): readonly class UserData { public function __construct(public string $name) {} }
• updateOrCreate is NOT atomic — race condition possible. Use DB transaction for critical ops