When developing applications, you spend 95% of your time working with models, views, and controllers. However, these respective directories are buried deep in the Laravel application directory structure. This script creates a project folder with symlink folders for Laravel controllers, models, and views for a specific Github repository. This all…

laravel-project-symlink.sh

#!/bin/bash

#
# Laravel MVC Project Symlink Script
# @author Jefferson Martin <github.com/jeffersonmartin>
#
# When developing applications, you spend 95% of your time working with models,
# views, and controllers. However, these respective directories are buried deep
# in the Laravel application directory structure. Although we could create a
# different directory structure, it requires a lot of changes to Service Providers
# and configuration files that can be difficult for other developers to get their
# head around when they expect the default Laravel directory structure.
#
# This script creates a project folder with symlink folders for controllers,
# models, and views for a specific Github repository. This allows you to open
# your project folder in your text editor and only see the controllers, models,
# views, and routes, but none of the extra directories that you rarely touch.
#
# Example Usage:
# ./laravel-project-symlink.sh account-name repository-name
#

# Define account-name and repository-name from CLI arguments
ACCOUNT_NAME=$1
REPOSITORY_NAME=$2

# Environment: What base directory do you want to use for symlinked project files?
ENV_PROJECT_DIR='/Users/jefferson/Projects'

# Environment: What directory structure do you use for cloned git repositories?
ENV_GIT_DIR="/Users/jefferson/Sites/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}"

# Laravel: What directory are your controllers located in?
LARAVEL_CONTROLLERS_DIR='app/Http/Controllers'

# Laravel: Where is your routes file located? You can change this to a directory if needed.
LARAVEL_ROUTES_FILE='app/Http/routes.php'

# Laravel: What directory are your models located in?
LARAVEL_MODELS_DIR='app/*.php'

# Laravel: What directory are your views located in?
LARAVEL_VIEWS_DIR='resources/views'

#
# Create Directory Structure & Symlinks
#

echo ''
echo 'Laravel MVC Project Symlink Script'
echo "Account: ${ACCOUNT_NAME}"
echo "Repository: ${REPOSITORY_NAME}"

echo ''
echo 'Creating directory structure for symlinked projects'
echo ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}
mkdir ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}

echo ''
echo 'Create directory structure for Git account and repository'
echo ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}
mkdir -p ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}

echo ''
echo 'Create symlink for Laravel controllers'
echo ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/controllers
ln -s ${ENV_GIT_DIR}/${LARAVEL_CONTROLLERS_DIR} ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/controllers

echo ''
echo 'Create symlink for Laravel models'
echo ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/models
mkdir ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/models
ln -s ${ENV_GIT_DIR}/${LARAVEL_MODELS_DIR} ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/models

echo ''
echo 'Create symlink for Laravel views'
echo ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/views
ln -s ${ENV_GIT_DIR}/${LARAVEL_VIEWS_DIR} ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/views

echo ''
echo 'Create symlink for Laravel routes'
ln -s ${ENV_GIT_DIR}/${LARAVEL_ROUTES_FILE} ${ENV_PROJECT_DIR}/${ACCOUNT_NAME}/${REPOSITORY_NAME}/

echo ''
echo 'Script complete'
echo ''

Here is a screenshot of the simpler directory structure.