Skipper is a powerful visual editor for Laravel Eloquent

Engineers are the artists with better tools. They not only use their senses to create a masterpiece, they also use their brains, so they can achieve it smarter.

Imagine you can become a genuine Laravel engineer.

Imagine you can use a tool that allows you to:

• Create a visual model of your project with just a few clicks
• Generate all model and migration files from this model without typing any lines of a code
• Change the model at any time in the future and get updated migrations at the same moment

Sounds too good to be true? Not at all. Skipper is a powerful visual editor for Laravel Eloquent that can do this all. And it brings you much more.

Benefits of Skipper Usage

• Skipper saves you a huge amount of time.
  At any phase of project lifecycle, it doesn’t matter if you start from scratch or just edit an older project, this is what you always get – a terribly large amount of time, which you can spend in a better way.

• Skipper decreases the demands on your coders’ skills.
  We all want to have the best employees possible. But sometimes, you cannot find them easily. Skipper reduces their lack of qualification by preventing possible mistakes they could make while coding manually. With the course by Tom H Anderson you will be able to give employment also to junior programmers.

• It always allows you to perfectly know your model.
  You and your whole team can clearly see and understand the whole project logic and how the data will flow through the system. Last but not least, with the diagram, you can also easily explain it to your customer.

• It allows understanding and management of the large projects easily
  Skipper can be used for applications with a few or hundreds of tables. Large projects are simply impossible to converse about without a visual model. Can you imagine joining a new project and they give you a SQL dump of the schema and say, “Learn this.” You probably don’t want to. With Skipper this will not be a problem anymore.

All right, until now we’ve been talking only about the comfort and the work that you can save. It might all sound like a nice marketing talk. So, do you wonder what Skipper really does in terms of Laravel coding? We understand that, let’s go through this.

Skipper Features

ORM-based Entity-Relationship Diagramming (not just database design)

• Editing of all objects (entities, modules, associations and indexes) through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
• In-built value advisors, validators, and assistants.
• Regions and color management for a well-arranged model.

Export of models to abstract classes allowing Skipper to manage them

• Export of Laravel migrations sequentially as your schema changes.
• Exported migrations are in a standardized and ready-to-use format.
• Migrations and abstract models are updated during each export, concrete models are exported one time and prepared for your customization

Import of existing projects

• Smart wizard guides you step by step through the project import from the database.
• You get a project model in just a few clicks.

Perfect tool for project documentation

• Exported migrations, with a complete ERD, give perfect referential integrity.
• Enables clear schema communication across the entire development team.
• Data stored as XML files for better readability and versioning support.

Wide range of customization options

• Support for your own templates, behaviors, custom properties, or data types.
• Allows you to connect Skipper with other external tools.

Well documented

• Comprehensive documentation covers every topic of Skipper usage.
• To get into Skipper really quickly and smoothly, check the section “Course” in this article.

Support for Eloquent and other frameworks

• Eloquent for Laravel.
• Doctrine (1 and 2) and Propel for Symfony and Zend.
• CakePHP and MongoDB ODM.
• Customized and in-house frameworks.

More than 10.000 satisfied customers

• Maybe you know some of them. Apple, eBay, Lidl, Avast, Hostwinds, SuddenLink, University of Kentucky… And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
• Stable and well-tested software with more than 10-year history.

The course

The course Designing Entity Relationship Diagrams in Laravel, created by erd.design, teaches you how to start using Skipper in your project today with guides on importing existing projects, starting projects from scratch, exporting to models and migrations, and how to create a readable ERD.

The course was built with the cooperation of Skipper and Tom H Anderson. The course also influenced the Laravel Framework, Illuminate, with new functionality added to allow changing of DateTime schemas.

All this was done to share the beauty of development that Skipper catalyzes. With 10 years of Skipper experience, erd.design is in a unique position to teach ERDs with Skipper and, through this ever-improving course, bring better Eloquent ORM engineering to a wider audience. Use the coupon code LARAVELNEWS for and you will get 25% price reduction.

Skipper Licensing

During 14-day long evaluation period, you can try for free all Skipper features and functions.

You can buy a lifetime license for €395 ($495) which also includes all updates for a 1-year period. After that, there is an annual maintenance agreement of €139 ($169) which gives you constant access to updates for the next 1 year.

If you like Skipper and have some ideas you could share with us, we would be happy for your feedback. In exchange, we want to offer you 10% off the price for your purchase. Write to us to support@skipper.com and we will provide you with your price-cut coupon.