理解laravel app.php 中的数组

Question

I was just going throught the app.php file of a repositoy on git and i came across the following arrays, an array of 'providers' :

'providers' => array(

    'Illuminate\Foundation\Providers\ArtisanServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Auth\AuthServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Cache\CacheServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Session\CommandsServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Foundation\Providers\ConsoleSupportServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Routing\ControllerServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Cookie\CookieServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Database\DatabaseServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Encryption\EncryptionServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Filesystem\FilesystemServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Hashing\HashServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Html\HtmlServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Log\LogServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Mail\MailServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Database\MigrationServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Pagination\PaginationServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Queue\QueueServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Redis\RedisServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Remote\RemoteServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Auth\Reminders\ReminderServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Database\SeedServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Session\SessionServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Translation\TranslationServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Validation\ValidationServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\View\ViewServiceProvider',
    'Illuminate\Workbench\WorkbenchServiceProvider',
    'Orchestra\Imagine\ImagineServiceProvider'
),

and an array 'aliases' :

'aliases' => array(

        'App'             => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\App',
        'Artisan'         => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Artisan',
        'Auth'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth',
        'Blade'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Blade',
        'Cache'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache',
        'ClassLoader'     => 'Illuminate\Support\ClassLoader',
        'Config'          => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Config',
        'Controller'      => 'Illuminate\Routing\Controller',
        'Cookie'          => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cookie',
        'Crypt'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Crypt',
        'DB'              => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB',
        'Eloquent'        => 'Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model',
        'Event'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Event',
        'File'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\File',
        'Form'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Form',
        'Hash'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Hash',
        'HTML'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\HTML',
        'Input'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Input',
        'Lang'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Lang',
        'Log'             => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log',
        'Mail'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Mail',
        'Paginator'       => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Paginator',
        'Password'        => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Password',
        'Queue'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Queue',
        'Redirect'        => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redirect',
        'Redis'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redis',
        'Request'         => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Request',
        'Response'        => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Response',
        'Route'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route',
        'Schema'          => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema',
        'Seeder'          => 'Illuminate\Database\Seeder',
        'Session'         => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Session',
        'SoftDeletingTrait' => 'Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletingTrait',
        'SSH'             => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\SSH',
        'Str'             => 'Illuminate\Support\Str',
        'URL'             => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\URL',
        'Validator'       => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Validator',
        'View'            => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\View',
        'Imagine' => 'Orchestra\Imagine\Facade'
    ),

Now can somebody tell me the purpose of these two arrays , i know one thing and that is everytime , you import a package into a laravel project , you have to update these two arrays , i think alias array is for you to use the name that you can later use, in your controller etc.

Can anybody though elaborate on whats the exact purpose of these two arrays ? i have a vague idea, but i don't know exactly what they do. can anybody explain ?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Documentation on Service Providers http://laravel.com/docs/master/providers - Quite a large topic and documentation is pretty comprehensive.

Aliases are just shortcuts to Facades. Facades provide static interfaces to classes in the service container. http://laravel.com/docs/master/facades