How to Start a Laravel Project

Published 1 year ago by Steve Beaudry

Laravel is a popular PHP framework that makes it easy for developers to create web applications. It offers a simple and elegant syntax, as well as a range of tools and features that make it a great choice for beginners. In this post, we'll walk through the process of starting a new app in Laravel, step by step.

Step 1: Install Laravel

The first step in starting a new app in Laravel is to install the framework on your machine. You'll need to have PHP and Composer installed first. Once you have those, you can use Composer to install Laravel by running the following command in your terminal:

composer global require laravel/installer

Step 2: Create a new project

Once you have Laravel installed, you can create a new project by running the following command in your terminal:

laravel new my-app

This will create a new directory called "my-app" with all the necessary files and directories for a new Laravel app.

Step 3: Serve the app

Now that you have a new Laravel app, you can serve it locally by running the following command in your terminal:

php artisan serve

This will start a local development server and make your app available at http://localhost:8000. You can now visit that URL in your web browser to see your new app.

Step 4: Create a Controller

The next step is to create a controller. Controllers are classes that handle HTTP requests and return a response. You can create a new controller by running the following command in your terminal:

php artisan make:controller MyController

This will create a new file called MyController.php in the app/Http/Controllers directory.

Step 5: Create a Route

Now that you have a controller, you need to create a route that maps a URL to the controller's methods. You can do this by adding a new route to the routes/web.php file.

Route::get('/', 'MyController@index');

This route maps the root URL of your app to the index method of your MyController class.

Step 6: Create a View

Finally, you need to create a view to display your data. Views are files that contain the HTML code that is returned to the user's browser. You can create a new view by creating a new file in the resources/views directory and add the following code:

<h1>Welcome to my Laravel App!</h1>

Now, you need to modify the index method of your controller to return this view.

public function index()

{

    return view('welcome');

}

That's it! you have created a new app in Laravel. You can now customize it to suit your needs, add more controllers, routes, and views, and build your app.

Note: this is just a basic example of how to start a new app in Laravel. There are many other things you can do with the framework, including working with databases, adding authentication and authorization, and more. If you're new to Laravel, I recommend checking out the official documentation and following some tutorials to learn more.