In this episode, we're getting into the nitty-gritty of how time slots are actually generated for our booking system. Remember those slots you saw in the course intro? This is where they come from!
First, we take a range of dates—let's keep it simple and use "today" and "tomorrow" as an example. For each day, we build out slots at fixed intervals that match the service duration (say, every 30 minutes). So you'll end up with times like 00:00, 00:30, 01:00, and so on, all the way through the day.
Next, we're throwing a bit of structure into the mix. Instead of just having a big list of times, we're using custom classes: one for each date, and inside it, a list of slots for that date. Each slot will eventually be able to say which employees are available to take that slot — but for now, we're just focusing on the building blocks.
We create a SlotRangeGenerator class whose job is to spit out all the possible slots between the dates you specify. Then we wrap this in a nice Laravel collection, so it's easy to slice, dice, and query. Afterwards, we prep each slot to later hold a list of employees who are available to work that particular time.
By the end of this episode, we've put together the groundwork: a collection of dates, each with their available slots, all structured and ready to be hooked up to employee availability in the next steps. In short: we're making it super easy to see, for any date and time, what can be booked—and later, by whom!