1. Home
2. Laravel
3. Getting Started with Laravel: A Beginner's Guide

Getting Started with Laravel: A Beginner's Guide

August 04, 2024   Laravel

Laravel is a powerful PHP framework designed to make web development easier and more enjoyable. Whether you're new to Laravel or looking to deepen your understanding, this guide will walk you through the essentials of getting started with Laravel.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architectural pattern. It offers an elegant syntax, a robust set of tools, and a vibrant community, making it one of the most popular frameworks for building web applications.

Why Choose Laravel?

• Elegant Syntax: Laravel's syntax is clean and easy to understand, making your code more readable and maintainable.
• Built-in Features: It comes with numerous built-in features such as routing, authentication, and caching.
• Community Support: A large and active community means plenty of tutorials, packages, and support are available.
• Eloquent ORM: Laravel's Eloquent ORM makes database interactions simple and intuitive.

Prerequisites

Before you start with Laravel, ensure you have the following:

• PHP: Laravel requires PHP 7.3 or higher.
• Composer: The dependency manager for PHP.
• A web server: Apache or Nginx.

Installing Laravel

To install Laravel, follow these steps:

1. Install Composer: If you haven't already, download and install Composer from getcomposer.org.

2. Install Laravel: Open your terminal and run the following command to create a new Laravel project:

   composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel myproject
   

    

   • Replace myproject with the name of your project.

3. Navigate to Your Project: Move into your project directory:

   cd myproject
   

4. Serve the Application: Start the Laravel development server: 

   php artisan serve
   

    

          Your application will be accessible at http://localhost:8000.  

Laravel Directory Structure

Understanding Laravel's directory structure is crucial for efficient development. Here are some key directories:

• app/: Contains the core code of your application.
• config/: Configuration files.
• database/: Database migrations and seeds.
• public/: Publicly accessible files, including the entry point index.php.
• resources/: Views, raw assets, and language files.
• routes/: All route definitions.
• storage/: Logs, compiled templates, and other files generated by the framework.
• tests/: Unit and feature tests.

Creating a Basic Route

Laravel routes define how your application responds to various HTTP requests. To create a basic route, open the routes/web.php file and add the following code:

Route::get('/hello', function () {
    return 'Hello, World!';
});

Now, navigating to http://localhost:8000/hello in your browser should display "Hello, World!".

 

 

---

---

---