Laravel: Up & Running, 2nd Edition

Glossary

Accessor

A method defined on an Eloquent model that customizes how a given property will be returned. Accessors make it possible to define that getting a given property from a model will return a different (or, more likely, differently formatted) value than what is stored in the database for that property.

ActiveRecord

A common database ORM pattern, and also the pattern that Laravel’s Eloquent uses. In ActiveRecord the same model class defines both how to retrieve and persist database records and how to represent them. Additionally, each database record is represented by a single entity in the application, and each entity in the application is mapped to a single database record.

API

Technically application programming interface, but most commonly used to refer to a series of endpoints (and instructions on how to use them) that can be used to make HTTP-based calls to read and modify data from outside of a system. Sometimes, the term API is also used to describe the set of interfaces, or affordances, any given package or library or class exposes to its consumers.

Application test

Often called acceptance or functional tests, application tests test the entire behavior of the application, usually at an outer boundary, by employing something like a DOM crawler—which is exactly what Laravel’s application test suite offers.

Argument (Artisan)

Arguments are parameters that can be passed to Artisan console commands. Arguments aren’t prefaced with -- or followed by =