Laravel Posts - Dev Problems

ProtonVPN Local Dev Environment Breaks (e.g. Laravel Herd, Valet) – FIX

Leave a Comment / Laravel, VPN / devproblems / 24 March 2026

If you’ve ever turned on ProtonVPN and suddenly your local development sites stopped working, you’re not alone. This is a surprisingly common issue for developers using tools like Laravel Herd, Laravel Valet, Docker-based dev servers, or even plain old localhost. In my case, Laravel Herd instantly stopped responding the moment ProtonVPN connected. The fix turned out to be simple — but […]

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Dummy & Fake SMTP Sandbox Email Apps: An Overview for Developers and Testers

Leave a Comment / Laravel / devproblems / 19 February 2026

Email is a core feature in many applications—account verification, password resets, system alerts, and notifications all depend on it. During development and testing, however, sending real emails is risky and unnecessary. This is where dummy (or fake) SMTP mailer apps become invaluable. Dummy SMTP tools simulate an SMTP server so your application can send emails

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Storing JSON in .env Files: A Laravel Developer’s Guide to Managing Google Service Account Keys

Leave a Comment / Laravel, PHP, Tips and Tricks / devproblems / 8 September 2025

When working with Laravel and Google Cloud services, you’ll often need to manage service account credentials that come as JSON files. These credentials are sensitive and shouldn’t be committed to version control, making .env files the natural choice for storage. However, .env files are designed for simple key-value pairs, not complex JSON structures. Let’s explore the best practices for

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Setting Up CDN with Laravel Forge: A Complete Production Guide

Leave a Comment / Laravel, Laravel Forge, PHP / devproblems / 2 September 2025

In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting up Bunny CDN in front of your Laravel application hosted on Forge (or whatever server), while maintaining Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates and implementing proper security measures. The best part? The setup is surprisingly simple – requiring just a few DNS changes and a 5-line PHP redirect. No

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Fixing TypeError: array_replace_recursive(): Argument #2 must be of type array, int given in Laravel

Leave a Comment / General, Laravel / devproblems / 20 August 2025

Sometimes a harmless-looking view include can explode with a deep PHP error. Here’s the one I hit on PHP 8.3: TypeError array_replace_recursive(): Argument #2 must be of type array, int given resources/views/partials/xyz.blade.php:100 require In my case it was triggered while resolving a translation string via __(‘site.translation’). The root cause? A corrupted (actually deleted) translation file:

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How I Fixed Missing SSL Certificates on Laravel Forge When /etc/nginx/ssl Was Empty

Leave a Comment / Laravel, Nginx / devproblems / 30 July 2025

Recently, I encountered a rare issue on Laravel Forge where the /etc/nginx/ssl directory was almost empty — missing the usual domain directories and SSL certificates. Despite Forge’s SSL tab showing certificates should exist, the absence of actual cert files caused SSL errors on my site. What Happened? How I Fixed It When It Still Didn’t Work Sometimes,

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Laravel Query Duration Logger in Production – Debugbar alternative

Leave a Comment / Laravel / devproblems / 25 March 2025

Laravel Debugbar can’t run in production, because it will show all your queries to anyone. And restricting it to certain IP’s / email addresses is also difficult and easily exposes too much information. That’s why I’ve created a simple alternative logging script that shows similar information. Alternative: running your own query duration logger when logged

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Troubleshooting Laravel Scout Import When No Records Appear in Search

Leave a Comment / Laravel, Typesense / devproblems / 4 March 2025

Laravel Scout makes full-text searching easy, but sometimes running php artisan scout:import seems to work—showing batches of records being imported—yet when you check your search engine, there are 0 results. I ran into this issue myself and discovered it was due to a missing return statement in the toSearchableArray() method. However, there are multiple possible

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Laravel Scout with Typesense Facet Filters

Leave a Comment / Laravel, Typesense / devproblems / 3 March 2025

Laravel Scout provides a convenient way to integrate search functionality into your application, but when using Typesense, you might notice that facets aren’t included in the default search method. This article demonstrates how to properly add facet filters to your Typesense searches in Laravel Scout. Basic Implementation Here’s a simplified implementation that shows how to

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Fix: Forbidden – a valid x-typesense-api-key header must be sent.

Leave a Comment / Laravel, PHP, Typesense / devproblems / 25 February 2025

You might encounter the following error with Typesense in PHP / Laravel / Scout: While it seems like something is missing, it could also be, because the scope of your API key is too strict. When trying to create a key that has access to all scopes + all permissions, you can check if it

Fix: Forbidden – a valid x-typesense-api-key header must be sent. Read More »