Laravel Sketchpad

Sketchpad is a new project, by Dave Stewart, that is an innovative live-coding, development and admin environment for your existing Laravel site.

It provides automatic routing, UI, and tooling around your controllers and methods, allowing you to write and run code without any glue.

Setup and usage are extremely flexible; install per user or per site, use it as a live-coding, live-documentation, admin area, or even your main site.

Take a look at the live video demo to get a better idea how it works:

Some of the uses of this project include:

• Test out new coding ideas
• Develop tools and utilities for everyday work
• Debug applications in the same environment they’re running in
• Practice with new libraries or APIs with your existing code
• Give new hires a place to get up to speed with the codebase
• Double check how that rarely-used function actually works
• Give all that “secret” or commented-out code somewhere to live
• Live-document existing features and tools
• Generate and manage reports

It’s an interesting project, and you can find more information about it on GitHub or take a look at the live demo.