Add an About Box to a PHP App (Laravel, Symfony)

Live example

This is the About box of AboutTheApp itself. Switch the variant to see other layouts. The code below renders exactly this box. For your own app, change the alias.

<script src="https://aboutthe.app/embed/web/0.3.5/card.js" integrity="sha384-X3VGSEdTNGsfVKfVUx7sq9ICfpWsJW88HDQYidGPio1KjoxYCbSirTNqtbVfq1sj" crossorigin="anonymous" async></script>

<about-the-app alias="aboutthe.app" variant="card" api-base="https://aboutthe.app/api/v1" visual-style="default" palette="default" appearance="auto"></about-the-app>

Add it to a PHP layout in 3 steps

The About box is a Web Component that the browser renders. The PHP app only outputs the script tag and the element, so it needs no Composer package and makes no API calls.

1. 1

   Create your product

   Create it in AboutTheApp and note its alias. The Integrate panel on the product card has the same code as the live example, already filled in with your alias.

2. 2

   Load the script in the layout

   Add the script tag to your main layout once, for example resources/views/layouts/app.blade.php in Laravel or templates/base.html.twig in Symfony.

3. 3

   Place the element

   Put <about-the-app alias="aboutthe.app"></about-the-app> into the footer of the layout or into an About page template.

<footer>
  <about-the-app alias="aboutthe.app" variant="footer" version="{{ $appVersion }}"></about-the-app>
</footer>

<script src="https://aboutthe.app/embed/web/v1/abouttheapp.js" async></script>

Pass the version from Composer in Laravel

Composer 2 knows the version of your root package. InstalledVersions::getRootPackage() returns it as pretty_version, which is the version field from composer.json or the Git tag the app was installed from. On a branch without a tag, it returns a value such as dev-main.

Share it with all views in AppServiceProvider and the layout above can use it. Release notes appear when the same version exists in the product's version catalog and is public. If you're not sure how to version your app, read app versioning schemes and examples.

use Composer\InstalledVersions;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;

public function boot(): void
{
    View::share('appVersion', InstalledVersions::getRootPackage()['pretty_version']);
}

Symfony and Twig

In Symfony, define app_version as a Twig global in config/packages/twig.yaml, for example from an APP_VERSION environment variable that your deployment sets. The base template then passes it to the element.

<footer>
  <about-the-app alias="aboutthe.app" variant="footer" version="{{ app_version }}"></about-the-app>
</footer>

<script src="https://aboutthe.app/embed/web/v1/abouttheapp.js" async></script>

Frequently asked questions