A new resource has popped up for those wanting to get even more information about the Laravel PHP framework - the Laracasts.com site. The site is devoted to providing a consolidated listing of Laravel screencasts across the web.

[This site is a] compilation of screencasts from Youtube and Vimeo. Let's learn Laravel together!

There's already a good number of screencasts posted to the site from folks like Taylor Otwell (author of the framework), Jeffrey Way (NetTuts) as well as several recordings of talks from various conferences about the framework. If you have a screencast that's not linked on the site, you can submit the information for review and inclusion.

Over on NetTuts.com today they've published a "one stop guide" to creating Laravel commands that can make using the Laravel PHP framework simpler. The format for these commands are more related to the Laravel 4 version of the framework (still in beta).

In this day and age, it's quite normal for a developer to have an understanding of consoles, and how to issue basic commands. But what if you could code your own custom commands to improve your workflow? If we look back to Laravel 3, you might remember that it offered tasks. Tasks were extremely helpful, but still came up short for more complex operations. Thankfully, Laravel 4 packs a beefed up Artisan that will make your life as a developer so much easier!

They start by introducing you to Artisan and what it can do already, then move into how you can create you own custom commands (with code examples). They show you how to add a description, coloring for the output, work with arguments, use confirm/question prompts and working with dependencies you might need.

NetTuts.com has a new tutorial in their series covering the use of the Laravel 4 framework. In this new post, though, they show how to ensure quality in your application by unit testing your models (the "M" in "MVC").

If you're hoping to learn why tests are beneficial, this is not the article for you. Over the course of this tutorial, I will assume that you already understand the advantages, and are hoping to learn how best to write and organize your tests in Laravel 4. Version 4 of Laravel offers serious improvements in relation to testing, when compared to its previous release. This is the first article of a series that will cover how to write tests for Laravel 4 applications. We'll begin the series by discussing model testing.

They show how to set up the environment - making it use an in-memory SQLite database, call the migration to initialize it and run a "createApplication" to bootstrap the app. They then include an example if tests written against a "Post" model that extends the Ardent class. It also uses the FactoryMuff package to create objects. Some example tests are included, checking things like object properties, "posted at" date formats and the "slug" of a page (in a Page model and its tests).

On NetTuts.com today they've posted the start of a new series looking at the creation of a RESTful API with the help of the Laravel 4 framework (in beta at the time of this post).

RESTful API's are hard! There are a lot of aspects to designing and writing a successful one. For instance, some of the topics that you may find yourself handling include authentication, hypermedia, versioning, rate limits, and content negotiation. Rather than tackling all of these concepts, however, let's instead focus on the basics of REST. We'll make some JSON endpoints behind a basic authentication system, and learn a few Laravel 4 tricks in the process.

Their API example is a "read it later" kind of application where users can store links to URLs they want to read later. They walk you through the installation of the framework, creation/configuration of the database and include the migrations to set it up. From there they help you set up the models, some authentication and routing. Finally, they get to the controllers and the functionality of the application, creating the URL controller to handle the creation, listing and updating of the resources.

On NetTuts.com there's a new screencast posted showing you how to get up and running with the upcoming version of a PHP framework that's been getting a lot of talk over the last year - Laravel 4.

As you may know, here at Nettuts+, we've covered the popular Laravel framework a great deal. With version 4 on the near horizon, I've received quite a few emails and comments, requesting a screencast that describes exactly how to clone and work with the alpha version of Laravel 4, as well as Composer. Hope this helps!

You can view the screencast using the in-page player or you can download the video to have it at a bit higher resolution.