Best Practices for Laravel 4 Helpers and Basic Functions?

The ugly, lazy and awful way: At the end of bootstrap/start.php , add an include('tools.php') and place your function in that new file.

The clean way: Create a library. That way it’ll be autoloaded ONLY when you actually use it.

• Create a libraries folder inside your app folder
• Create your library file, create a class in it, and add static functions to it
• Option 1: Edit start/global.php to add app_path().'/libraries' to the ClassLoader::addDirectories( array.
• Option 2: Edit composer.json to add "app/libraries" to the autoload array. Run composer dump-autoload
• Call your class and static functions from your views.

About your options, quoted from the global.php file

In addition to using Composer, you may use the Laravel class loader to
load your controllers and models. This is useful for keeping all of
your classes in the “global” namespace without Composer updating.

You can combine both options, where the Laravel class loader will automatically search for classes in the registered directories (Option 1, easier) and Composer will keep record of all the classes but only after you update it (Option 2, might improve performance).