Getting started ​

Terminology, general concept ​

In Sharp, we handle entities; an entity is simply a data structure which has a meaning in the application context. For instance, a Person, a Post or an Order. In the Eloquent world, for which Sharp is optimized, it's typically a Model — but it's not necessarily a 1-1 relationship, a Sharp entity can represent a portion of a Model, or several Models.

Each instance of an entity is called... an instance.

Each entity in Sharp can be displayed:

• in an Entity List, which is the list of all the instances for this entity: with some configuration and code, the user can sort the data, add filters, pagination, and perform searches. From there we also gain access to applicative commands applied either to an instance or to the whole (filtered) list, and to a simple state changer (the published state of an Article, for instance). All of that is described below.
• In a Show Page, optionally, to display an instance details.
• And in a Form, either to update or create a new instance.

Example ​

Let's take a simple example: we want to manage some shop, with 3 obvious entities: Order, Customer and Product.

We want to be able to list all the customers, to display a detailed view for each of them, and to create or update a customer. That’s an Entity List linking to a Show Page, linking to a Form:

For products, we decide that we don't need to build a Show Page:

The product Entity List may have filters, sorting columns and search, and an Entity state to manage the published state of each product.

Finally, orders, must be listed, detailed and updatable, and we also need to manage the product list of each order. That's an Entity List linking to a Show Page which contains another Entity List:

Maybe we can add an Entity Cmmand to export orders in a CSV file in the Entity List, and an Instance command on the order Show Page to declare the order as shipped.

This is a simple example to illustrate the main concepts of Sharp: we'll see in this guide how to build such structures but also more complexe ones, and how to manage states, commands, dashboards, authorizations, errors, validation... in the process.

Installation ​

Sharp 8 needs Laravel 10+ and PHP 8.2+.

• Add the package with composer: composer require code16/sharp
• And then publish assets: php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Code16\Sharp\SharpServiceProvider" --tag=assets

A tip on this last command: you'll need fresh assets each time Sharp is updated, so a good practice is to add the command in the scripts.post-autoload-dump section of your composer.json file:

"scripts": {
    [...]
    "post-autoload-dump": [
        "Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump",
        "@php artisan vendor:publish --provider=Code16\\Sharp\\SharpServiceProvider --tag=assets --force",
        "@php artisan package:discover"
    ]
},

"scripts": {
    [...]
    "post-autoload-dump": [
        "Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump",
        "@php artisan vendor:publish --provider=Code16\\Sharp\\SharpServiceProvider --tag=assets --force",
        "@php artisan package:discover"
    ]
},

Configuration ​

Sharp needs a config/sharp.php config file, mainly to declare entities.

You can initialize this file with php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Code16\Sharp\SharpServiceProvider" --tag=config

Here's an example:

return [
    'entities' => [
        'products' => \App\Sharp\Entities\ProductEntity::class,
        // Other entities...
    ]
];

return [
    'entities' => [
        'products' => \App\Sharp\Entities\ProductEntity::class,
        // Other entities...
    ]
];

This ProductEntity class could be written like this:

class ProductEntity extends SharpEntity
{
    protected string $label = 'Product';
    protected ?string $list = ProductList::class;
    protected ?string $show = ProductShow::class;
    protected ?string $form = ProductForm::class;
    protected ?string $policy = ProductPolicy::class;
}

class ProductEntity extends SharpEntity
{
    protected string $label = 'Product';
    protected ?string $list = ProductList::class;
    protected ?string $show = ProductShow::class;
    protected ?string $form = ProductForm::class;
    protected ?string $policy = ProductPolicy::class;
}

We chose to define:

• a list class, responsible for the Entity List,
• a show class, responsible for displaying an instance in a Show Page,
• a form class, responsible for the create and edit Form,
• and a policy class, for authorizations.

Almost each one is optional, in fact: we could skip the show and go straight to the form from the list, for instance.

We'll get into all those classes in this guide. The important thing to notice is that Sharp provides base classes to handle all the wiring (and more), but as we'll see, the applicative code is totally up to you.

Access to Sharp ​

Once installed, Sharp is accessible via the url /sharp, by default. If you wish to change this default value, you'll need to define the custom_url_segment config value, in config/sharp.php:

// config/sharp.php

return [
    'name' => 'My Sharp app',
    'custom_url_segment' => 'admin',
    // ...
]

// config/sharp.php

return [
    'name' => 'My Sharp app',
    'custom_url_segment' => 'admin',
    // ...
]