Laravel 5.2 is a very popular open source PHP framework aimed at easy development of applications. If you are looking for a new PHP framework to try, you should give Laravel a try. The following guide will allow you to run Laravel on a Ubuntu 15.10 based Apache server.
Pre-Requisities:
Before proceeding with the installation, its always a good idea to make sure your sources and existing softwares are all updated.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Installing PHP7:
We can install PHP 7 and the Apache PHP module as follows:
sudo apt install php7.0 libapache2-mod-php7.0 php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-mbstring
Then restart Apache:
systemctl restart apache2
Installing Composer:
Composer, the now de facto dependency manager, is a must-use in the PHP ecosystem. It will manage the dependencies – pull in required libraries, dependencies and manage them all for you. Composer also has a main repository: Packagist. Combined, Composer and Packagist make the experience similar to npm or Ruby’s Bundler.
In order to use Composer, install zip/unzip: sudo apt install zipAlso, we will need Git installed on our system:apt install git Okay, now – let’s go ahead and actually install Composer: cd ~ curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
This will create a file called composer.phar in your home directory. This is a PHP archive, and it can be run from the command line.
We want to install it in a globally accessible location though. Also, we want to change the name to composer (without the file extension). We can do this in a couple steps.
Let’s make it an executable that we can run as composer:
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composerAlright, alright, alright! We should be able to see a list of Composer commands:
composerSaw the list? Great. Let’s move on to Laravel.
Install Laravel & Quickstart Tutorial:
To install Laravel, we need to install Composer first. It is a tool for dependency management in PHP that allows you to package all the required libraries associated with a package as one. To install Laravel and all its dependencies, Composer is required. It will download and install everything that is required to run Laravel framework. To install Composer, issue the following commands.
MySQL
First, let’s set up our database. It will only take a second. We’re going to use MySQL – remember that password you saw after you logged in?
Login to MySQL on the command line – using your saved password:
mysql -uroot -p
You will be prompted for your password. Once in – enter in the following commands:
Once logged in to MySQL – enter in the following commands:
mysql> CREATE USER 'laravel'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'laravel';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'laravel'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> CREATE DATABASE laravel;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
You can name your user, password, and database anything you want – we are using laravel for the sake of being easy.
Laravel & Stream Example Project
To make it as easy as possible to get started, let’s just clone the completed Stream-Laravel example app.
Please note that you do not need to copy and paste any code, or create any files. Rather, this is intended to help you learn while you follow along with the process.
Follow the steps below to add Laravel, along with the Stream-Laravel example application:
First, move to /var/www/:
cd /var/www/
You may want to use sudo with the following commands to avoid any permissions errors. Check out this DigitalOcean how-to and search for “permissions”.
Next, clone the Stream-Laravel-Example project as “quickstart”:
git clone https://github.com/GetStream/Stream-Laravel-Example quickstart
cd quickstart
composer install
Okay, cool. If all went well – you just installed a bunch of dependencies inside of vendor.
Note: The Stream-Laravel example application is based off of the Laravel quickstart-intermediate project. Please take a look at the additional references below for more information.
Additional References:
GitHub Repository
Laravel Quickstart Documentation
Set Database Credentials
One thing we need to do is set our new application’s database credentials – which happens in a .env file.
Copy .env.example, which is located in the root directory, to .env:
cp .env.example .env
Next, let’s add our database credentials. For the sake of an easy example we use “laravel”:
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=laravel
DB_PASSWORD=laravel
Now let’s run php artisan migrate.
If all goes well, you should see something like:
Migration table created successfully.
Migrated: 2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table
Migrated: 2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table
Migrated: 2016_02_04_041533_create_tasks_table
Migrated: 2016_07_12_182728_create_follows_table
Let’s also generate and set an encryption key:
php artisan key:generate
Create an Apache Virtual Host for your project.
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
sudo nano myapp.conf
Have the contents of the file match what’s below.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName myapp.localhost.com
DocumentRoot "/home/vagrant/projects/myapp/public"
<Directory "/home/vagrant/projects/myapp/public">
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Save the file, then continue below.
cd ../sites-enabled sudo a2ensite myapp.conf sudo service apache2 reload
Fixing Permissions
If you’re running a virtual machine under Vagrant, you may want to change the user and group to avoid permission issues.
To do this:
cd /etc/apache2 sudo nano envvars
Change the lines below to contain the desired user and group
export APACHE_RUN_USER=vagrant
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=vagrant
Save the file and restart apache.
sudo service apache2 restart
How to and tutorials 