In this episode, we're diving into refactoring our reCAPTCHA implementation into its own custom Blade directive in Laravel. Don't worry if you've never created a Blade directive before—I'll walk you through it step by step.
We start by using Artisan to generate a new service provider specifically for our reCAPTCHA logic (keeping things organized instead of dumping everything in AppServiceProvider
). After registering our new provider, we build out a super simple Blade directive just to get the hang of it. When we see our directive's output on the page, we know we're on the right track!
Next, we move our reCAPTCHA logic into the new directive. This involves a bit of refactoring, especially when it comes to outputting HTML from PHP, so we discuss escaping quotes and safely outputting code. We also adjust our logic so that, instead of relying on an existing hidden input in the form, we programmatically create and append it right before the form is submitted. This means our directive is super flexible—you can just add it to any form and it will "just work" without extra markup.
Along the way, we run into a common gotcha with Blade directive caching and show how to clear the view cache to make our changes take effect. By the end, we've got a slick, reusable Blade directive for reCAPTCHA. In the next episode, we'll take it even further by adding options to make our directive more flexible!