14. Your First Complete, Controller- and View-Powered Page

In the previous lesson, you:

• learned why using a web application framework is so helpful
• created the start of your full Laravel web application
• learned about routes and how they direct traffic in a Laravel web app

What you'll learn and do in this lesson:

• create your first Laravel controller for static pages
• learn all about classes and how they work in PHP
• create a full About page, powered by a route, your controller, and a new view

The lesson:

What you should do now:

Do these Exercises:

1. Add a Contact Page to Your Laravel Application
2. Commit your changes to your Git repository and push them up to GitHub
3. Write an entry in your Journal for this lesson

Read through these Resources:

• How To Use Classes In PHP

Terms covered in this lesson:

Skeeter

guy whose shirt I'm reppin' in this lesson's video

class

a reusable, self-contained module of code, used for a specific purpose

class instance

if you think of the class as sort of a “template”, you can create an “object” based on that template; that “object” is called a class instance

extend

the ability of a class to "borrow" another class's functionality, using the extends keyword in PHP

controller action

function in a controller whose explicit task is to handle a user request