What’s new in Laravel 8

Laravel 8, released on September 8, 2020, introduced a variety of new features and improvements aimed at enhancing the development experience. Notable additions include Laravel Jetstream, which offers a refined application scaffolding experience with options for frontend integration using Livewire or Inertia.js, and the introduction of a default app/Models directory for better organization of model files. The update also revamped the model factory feature to be class-based, allowing for more complex data generation and relationships. Migration squashing was introduced to consolidate large migration files into a single SQL file, optimizing database management. Job batching now allows grouping jobs to run concurrently with progress monitoring, while improved rate limiting and maintenance mode features offer more control and flexibility. Other enhancements include dynamic blade components for runtime component rendering, time testing helpers for temporal manipulation in tests, and automatic application reload on .env modification under the artisan serve command. Additionally, pagination views now default to Tailwind CSS, with Bootstrap support still available, and routing has shifted away from automatic namespace prefixing, requiring explicit callable syntax.