Laravel is used by many thousands of developers every day to create all kinds of websites and applications. But fortunately, there are some very commonly used naming conventions that are followed by many developers when naming their Laravel project's variables, methods and functions. Here is my overview of the best naming conventions for Laravel.

(Please let me know in a comment if you disagree with anything here)

Naming Controllers

Controllers should be in PascalCase/CapitalCase.

They should be in singular case, no spacing between words, and end with "Controller".

Also, each word should be capitalised (i.e. BlogController, not blogcontroller).

For example: BlogController, AuthController, UserController.

Naming database tables in Laravel

DB tables should be in lower case, with underscores to separate words (snake_case), and should be in plural form.

For example: posts, project_tasks, uploaded_images.

Pivot tables

Pivot tables should be all lower case, each model in alphabetical order, separated by an underscore (snake_case).

For example: post_user, task_user etc.

Table columns names

Table column names should be in snake_case (underscores between words) - in lower case. You shouldn't reference the table name.

For example: post_body, id, created_at.

Primary Key

This should normally be id.

Foreign Keys

Foreign keys should be the model name (singular), with '_id' appended to it (assuming the PK in the other table is 'id').

For example: comment_id, user_id.

Variables

Normal variables should typically be in camelCase, with the first character lower case.

For example: $users = ..., $bannedUsers = ....

If the variable contains an array or collection of multiple items then the variable name should be in plural. Otherwise, it should be in singular form.

For example: $users = User::all(); (as this will be a collection of multiple User objects), but $user = User::first() (as this is just one object)

Naming Conventions for models

Naming Models in Laravel

A model should be in PascalCase/CapitalCase. They should be in singular, no spacing between words, and capitalised.

For example: User (\App\User or \App\Models\User, etc), ForumThread, Comment.

Generally, your models should be able to automatically work out what database table it should use from the following method:

<?php
    /**
     * Get the table associated with the model.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getTable()
    {
        if (! isset($this->table)) {
            return str_replace(
                '\\', '', Str::snake(Str::plural(class_basename($this)))
            );
        }
        return $this->table;
    }

But of course you can just set $this->table in your model. See the section below on table naming conventions.

I recommend that you create models and migrations at the same time by running php artisan make:model -m ForumPost. This will auto-generate the migration file (in this case, for a DB table name of 'forum_posts').

Model properties

These should be lower case, snake_case. They should also follow the same conventions as the table column names.

For example: $this->updated_at, $this->title.

Model Methods

Methods in your models in Laravel projects, like all methods in your Laravel projects, should be camelCase with the first character lower case.

For example: public function get(), public function getAll().

Relationships

hasOne or belongsTo relationship (one to many)

These should be singular form and follow the same naming conventions of normal model methods (camelCase, with the first letter lower case)

For example: public function postAuthor(), public function phone().

hasMany, belongsToMany, hasManyThrough (one to many)

These should be the same as the one to many naming conventions, however, it should be in plural.

For example: public function comments(), public function roles().

Polymorphic relationships

These can be a bit awkward to get the naming correct.

Ideally, you want to be able to have a method such as this:

<?php
public function category()
{
    return $this->morphMany('App\Category', 'categoryable');
}

And Laravel will by default assume that there is a categoryable_id and categoryable_type.

But you can use the other optional parameters for morphMany ( public function morphMany($related, $name, $type = null, $id = null, $localKey = null)) to change the defaults.

Controllers

Method naming conventions in controllers

These should follow the same rules as model methods. I.e. camelCase (first character lowercase).

In addition, for normal CRUD operations, they should use one of the following method names.

Traits

Traits should be be adjective words.

Blade view files

Blade files should be in lower case, snake_case (underscore between words).

For example: all.blade.php, all_posts.blade.php, etc