Add IDE helper to PhpStom for Laravel

To ease your development experience you can use your IDE helpers, with PhpStorm and Symfony I use them a lot.

Today I do my first try with Laravel, and I have my habits with PhpStorm helpers.

I use Homstead, when I install a new package to my project, I do it from inside the VM.
From inside your project directory use:

vagrant ssh

You will be in your VM, you go to your project directory, for me it’s

cd /home/vagrant/code/laravel/

And you add this:

composer require --dev barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper

Almost there, add this to your app/providers/appServiceProvider.php (à partir de laravel 5.5)

public function register()
{
    if ($this->app->environment() !== 'production') {
        $this->app->register(\Barryvdh\LaravelIdeHelper\IdeHelperServiceProvider::class);
    }
    // ...
}

https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper => repository of the helper for complete doc

Last step after the installation is complete:

artisan ide-helper:generate

This command is to run from the Homestead VM, if you want PhpStorm can open a terminal within the VM for you (Tools -> Start an SSH session … -> select Vagrant -> enjoy).
But I prefer to have a separated terminal because I display it on my 2nd screen.

You have 2 more things to do:

• add the Laravel plugin to PhpStorm
• active the plugin for you project

Go to « File -> Settings » search for « plugins » and for « Laravel » for the second image.

Install it and restart PhpStorm, after that enable the plugin for this project

Done ! Happy coding ^^

Links:

Jetbrain complete help: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/phpstorm/laravel.html

Old blogpost about the helper: https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2015/01/laravel-development-using-phpstorm/