In this article, we are going to learn how to make a custom helper in Laravel 6.2. We can define many custom functions in the helper and we can use the functions anywhere we want.

Let’s follow these steps to create a custom helper:

Table of Contents

1. Create helpers.php File
2. Define Helper in composer.json
3. Use in Controller
4. Use in Blade File

Step 1 : Create helpers.php File

Navigate to app folder and create a file called “helpers.php‘. We are going to create a currency convert function in the custom helper. Paste the below code in the helper.

<?php

function convertCurrency($amount,$from_currency,$to_currency){
    $apiKey = 'your-api-key-here';

    $from_Currency = urlencode($from_currency);
    $to_Currency = urlencode($to_currency);
    $query =  "{$from_Currency}_{$to_Currency}";

    // change to the free URL if you're using the free version
    $json = file_get_contents("https://api.currconv.com/api/v7/convert?q={$query}&compact=ultra&apiKey={$apiKey}");
    $obj = json_decode($json, true);

    $val = floatval($obj["$query"]);

    $total = $val * $amount;
    return number_format($total, 2, '.', '');
}

Step 2 : Define Helper in composer.json

Open the composer.json file and in the autoload section we need to define the location of helpers.php. Let’s define:

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "App\\": "app/"
    },
    "classmap": [
        "database/seeds",
        "database/factories"
    ],
    "files": [
        "app/helpers.php"
    ]
},

After adding the helpers.php, run this command to load the file globally in our project:

composer dump-autoload

Step 3 : Use in Controller

We have created the custom helper. Let’s call from the controller.

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Response;

class TestController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $converted_amount = convertCurrency(10, 'USD', 'GBP');
        echo $converted_amount;
    }
}

Step 4 : Use in Blade File

As the controller, we can also call helper functions in the view blade file. Here’s an example:

@extends('layouts.app')

@section('content')

@php
$converted_amount = convertCurrency(10, 'USD', 'GBP');
echo $converted_amount;
@endphp

@endsection

We have created and tested the custom helper. Thanks for reading. ?

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