Ekko Laravel Package

Getting Started

Install it like any Composer utility — there is no service provider, no facade registration, no publish step:

composer require laravelista/ekko

The package autoloads a small set of global helper functions (is_active(), active_class()) backed by an Ekko\Active class that reads the current request URI. That is essentially the whole surface area, so the first place to look is vendor/laravelista/ekko/src/ — it is a couple of hundred lines total and worth reading end-to-end before you rely on it, because the matching rules are the entire product.

The first use case is the obvious one: a nav link that highlights itself.

{{-- resources/views/partials/nav.blade.php --}}
<a href="/" class="{{ active_class('/') }}">Home</a>
<a href="/about" class="{{ active_class('/about') }}">About</a>
<a href="/blog" class="{{ active_class('/blog/*') }}">Blog</a>

active_class('/about') returns 'active' when the current URL matches, and an empty string otherwise, so it drops straight into a class attribute without a ternary. is_active('/about') is the boolean form if you need it for logic (aria-current, conditional markup, etc.). If you are on Laravel, the equivalent built-in is request()->is('about') — the reason to reach for ekko at all is that it works the same in a plain PHP app, a Slim app, or a legacy template that has no framework container.

Implementation Patterns

Pattern matching instead of exact strings. The primary reason to use ekko over $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] === '/about' is wildcard support for section highlighting. active_class('/blog/*') keeps the Blog nav item lit while the user is on /blog/some-post, which is exactly the day-to-day behaviour you otherwise hand-roll with str_starts_with.

active_class('/blog/*');        // /blog, /blog/post, /blog/2024/01/post
is_active('/users/*/edit');     // mid-string wildcard

Grouping several paths under one nav item. Pass an array when a single menu entry covers multiple routes:

<a href="/settings" class="{{ active_class(['/settings', '/settings/*', '/account/*']) }}">
  Settings
</a>

Custom active class for CSS frameworks. Bootstrap wants active; Tailwind wants utility strings. Pass the second argument rather than mapping in the template:

<a href="/about"
   class="nav-link {{ active_class('/about', 'bg-gray-900 text-white') }}"
   @if(is_active('/about')) aria-current="page" @endif>
  About
</a>

Wrap it once, use it everywhere. Because the helper is global and string-based, the clean Laravel move is a Blade component that centralises the class and aria-current logic so you are not repeating the pattern in twenty links:

// app/View/Components/NavLink.php
class NavLink extends Component
{
    public function __construct(public string $href, public string $pattern = '') {}

    public function render()
    {
        return view('components.nav-link', [
            'isActive' => is_active($this->pattern ?: $this->href),
        ]);
    }
}

Pointing it at an explicit URL for testing. The Ekko\Active class accepts the URL/URI to evaluate rather than always reading $_SERVER, which is what makes it testable:

$active = new \Ekko\Active('/blog/post');
$this->assertTrue($active->is('/blog/*'));

Use this in unit tests and in any place where the "current" URL isn't the literal request (console commands, queued mailers rendering a nav, preview screens).

Use it as a thin layer, not an architecture. The realistic integration tip is: use ekko to answer "is this link active?" and nothing else. Compute the value in a view composer or component and pass a boolean down, rather than sprinkling helper calls through deeply nested partials — it keeps templates trivially cacheable and makes the dependency one line to delete later.

Gotchas and Tips

Query strings will bite you. The helper inspects the request URI, which includes ?page=2. is_active('/blog') will not match /blog?page=2 in the naive case. Either match /blog* or strip the query string before the check. This is the single most common "why isn't my nav highlighting" bug with this package.

Trailing slashes and subdirectory installs. /about/ and /about are different strings; so is /myapp/about when the app is deployed under a subdirectory. Prefer patterns (/about*) or normalise the URI yourself. Nothing in the package knows about your app's base path.

Wildcards are not path-aware. * is a glob, not a segment matcher, so /about* also matches /about-us and /abouting. Order your checks from most specific to least specific, and prefer '/about/*' plus an explicit '/about' when you want a real section boundary.

No request context on the CLI. Cron jobs, queue workers, and artisan commands have no meaningful REQUEST_URI. If a nav partial is rendered from a console context (e.g. a mailable preview or a PDF generator), the helpers will return false — or warn. Pass the URL into Ekko\Active explicitly in those code paths.

Maintenance is the real risk. Last release was March 2021 and there is no active development. It is a ~200-line, zero-dependency utility, so the practical advice is: pin the version, run your test suite on the PHP version you actually deploy, and be prepared to inline the two helper functions if a future PHP release breaks it. Do not build additional abstractions on top of it that would make removal expensive.

Never use it for anything security-adjacent. "Is this URL active" is a presentation concern. Do not let an active state, an active class, or the matched pattern drive authorization, redirects, or feature gating.

Escape the output. active_class() can return a caller-supplied class string; if any part of that string is user- or config-derived, run it through e() in Blade. In practice the values are hard-coded, but the helper does not escape for you.

If you're already on Laravel, consider not adopting it. request()->is('blog/*'), request()->routeIs('blog.*'), and Route::is() cover the same ground, are route-aware (which is more correct than URL matching when routes change), and ship with the framework. Ekko's value is portability — a non-Laravel app, a shared template package, or a mixed codebase — not capability.