Michael Dyrynda has written up a new post for the Laravel users out there showing an elegant form handling method he's come up with that doesn't involve the use of the older version of the Laravel Collective HTML package.

On episode 28 of the North Meets South Web Podcast, Jake and I were discussing packages that we always pull into our Laravel projects. Jacob mentioned that he still uses the Laravel Collective HTML package, which was forked from the functionality that was present before Laravel 5, which is something I suggested I hadn't done for a long time.

[...] Jacob went on to explain that a big part of using the form package is because it handles binding form data directly to the forms for you, allowing you to separate form inputs from the create / edit components themselves. [...] I suggested that you can go about this simply enough in your applications by using a combination of the old() helper method and an empty model.

He includes code examples of both ways to generate the form, first using the Collective package then using just the old() helper function to repopulate the form values when the page is rendered. He points out that using this internal method doesn't require yet another package. There are some niceties that are missed with going with the old() method, but there are benefits too.