# Back-End

# Introduction

In this chapter, I am going to list all those skills that concern the persistence of data and their delivery, when they are requested by the Front End via the RESTful API.

# Laravel

The PHP framework that I use for the back end is Laravel. The elegance of the syntax characterizes it and is the ideal companion of Vue.js.

I only use it as API Responder, delegating all that is the graphic aspect to Vue.js. Laravel's task is to deal with CRUD operations with the DataBase, send e-mails, manage third-party APIs (e.g. payments), ...

On the same line of thought, the authors of the framework, who in the latest versions, have decided to relegate the graphic aspect in an optional package.

# Test Driven Development

For my projects, at least the most important ones, I adopt an approach Test Driven. Translated into practice, it means first writing the code to reproduce the test of a customer request, and step by step, writing the code of the actual request. This guide the development by hand, implies a very capillary control of the software and drastically reduces the possibility of unexpected errors, perhaps even not strictly connected to the implemented feature. Another huge advantage is the possibility of refactoring or upgrade: the tests would immediately highlight any errors.

It is inevitable for large projects: pollini.com does not have this coding approach, and the code, written in Laravel 5.1 (which has finished releasing security patches on Juin 9,2018) it cannot be updated without tests (errors would be reported to the call center by customers who would not be able to make purchases 😱) and for an e-commerce it is a clear big problem.

# Modularity and Domain Driven Development

My target are large projects: therefore the need to find a methodology capable of breaking down a large problem that is difficult to solve, into many small problems that can be easily solved is inevitable. This methodology is called modularity and opposes the monolithic development of an application. Technically they are called packages and act as "Lego": a bit like NPM in the front end, Composer is the cement to hold all the bricks together.

The advantages are enormous: think about the difference between looking for a book in a huge box full of other books, or finding it in a library, ordered by name/author/version.

Furthermore, it greatly facilitates the re-use of code: for example, a generic package of categories and products, can be reused in various e-Commerce, each of which will add any differences to the basic package. Any additions or corrections would also require the launch of a single command on the servers that publish projects affected by the change.

# DataBase

All my work, with regard to data modeling, starts from a graphic design of the DataBase (mostly MySQL), followed by the codification of the migrations, in order to have a versioning of the DataBase (limited to the package to which they refer).