How to create custom helper functions in Laravel

Question

I would like to create helper functions to avoid repeating code between views in Laravel. For example:

view.blade.php

<p>Foo Formated text: {{ fooFormatText($text) }}</p>

They're basically text formatting functions. How should I define globally available helper functions like fooFormatText()?

Answer 1

Create a helpers.php file in your app folder and load it up with composer:

"autoload": {
    "classmap": [
        ...
    ],
    "psr-4": {
        "App\\": "app/"
    },
    "files": [
        "app/helpers.php" // <---- ADD THIS
    ]
},

After adding that to your composer.json file, run the following command:

composer dump-autoload

---

If you don't like keeping your helpers.php file in your app directory (because it's not a PSR-4 namespaced class file), you can do what the laravel.com website does: store the helpers.php in the bootstrap directory. Remember to set it in your composer.json file:

"files": [
    "bootstrap/helpers.php"
]