Hi there,

In this update, we'd like to share things that we've released these past months and preview cool stuff that we're working on right now.

Let's talk about Ray

Ray is a beautiful desktop application that will help you debug problems faster. We initially launched it early 2021. Since then, we've added a lot of features:

• connecting to and debugging on remote servers
• 20+ extra Laravel helpers
• the ability to pause incoming logs (so you can sample loops)
• searching in all your debug items
• a lot of packages to easily use Ray in specific PHP / JS projects

Last week, we released Global Ray, which makes getting started even easier. After Global Ray is installed, you can use the ray() function in any PHP file on your system. This makes using Ray a breeze for any PHP developer, regardless of whether you're using Laravel, WordPress, Symfony, or any other PHP framework or app. You can read more about Global Ray in this blog post on freek.dev.

If you haven't bought a Ray license yet and want to give it a spin, we have good news for you! When you log in or create an account at spatie.be, you'll find a free license key on your purchases page, that will be valid for a month. You can use the license key to unlock Ray, which you can download on the Ray website.

We're currently giving the Ray website a fresh coat of paint featuring more testimonials. If you want to give us your testimonial of a couple of sentences long, simply reply to this mail.

Some more big things are coming to Ray, but we'll talk about that in a next newsletter.

Writing readable PHP

These last few years, our team has built many quality Laravel applications of all sizes. In our premium video courses, we want to share our knowledge with you. You can already enjoy a course on building big Laravel applications, writing tests with PHPUnit and Pest, how to create PHP and Laravel packages, and a few more.

We’re currently creating a new course titled Writing Readable PHP. For this course, we're going back to basics. You will learn how to write PHP code that's a joy to read for your co-workers and your future self. And as a bonus, you'll see how static analysis can be used to ensure that your code is understandable and correct.

Community member Christoph Rumpel is helping us create the course, you can expect to see many high-quality videos on clean code by him, and Freek and Christoph will do a couple of streams together.

If you want to start learning already, you can subscribe to our mailing list at writing readable PHP, to get free clean coding tips in your mailbox for the next couple of weeks.

We're currently building all the content and will launch the complete course in April.

Riding the Mailcoach

Mailcoach is a self-hosted solution for sending mail reliably and affordably using SES, Mailgun, Postmark ... It definitely works well: this very newsletter is sent using Mailcoach!

In addition to sending email campaigns to lists of all sizes, Mailcoach can handle customisable drip campaigns and log transactional mails.

Last month, we released v5, which adds full compatibility with Laravel 9 and PHP 8.1. Behind the scenes, we needed to make extensive changes as Laravel swapped out SwiftMailer in favor of the more modern Symfony Mailer component. If you are using v4 now, you'll find upgrade instructions in our docs.

We have some cool plans to make Mailcoach even better. You can expect news on this in the next couple of months.

Improving Flare

Flare is the best exception tracker for Laravel and PHP applications. We are constantly adding new features and refining existing ones.

We have good news for our European friends who don’t like to pay with a credit card: you can now subscribe to Flare using SEPA. If you do, you’ll see our beautiful new billing experience in action which is powered by Stripe’s Customer Portal.

You’ve probably noticed that Ignition, Laravel’s default error page, got a major redesign in Laravel 9. We’re currently updating Flare to match that redesign. This new design will be ready to launch in the next few months.

New in open source

We probably already know that we have a big heart for open source. Here are some packages that we recently released.

Make sure to check out the complete list of packages in the open source section of our site.

In closing

We hope that you've enjoyed this newsletter. If you have any questions or remarks for our team, simply reply to this mail.

Thanks for reading,

Freek & all of us at Spatie