Introduction to Laravel and XAMPP

Laravel is a highly popular PHP web application framework that is known for its elegant syntax, rich feature set, and adherence to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. Laravel is widely used by developers to create robust, maintainable, and scalable web applications. XAMPP is a free and open-source cross-platform web server solution that contains Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB, and PHP, which can be used to develop and test websites and applications.

Prerequisites for Installing Laravel on XAMPP

To begin, ensure that you have the following prerequisites installed on your machine:

XAMPP: You need to have XAMPP installed. Download it from Apache Friends. Composer: Laravel utilizes Composer to manage dependencies. Follow the official Composer documentation to install it.

Step-by-Step Guide to Install Laravel on XAMPP

Starting XAMPP

Open the XAMPP Control Panel and start the Apache and MySQL services.

Creating a New Laravel Project

Open a command prompt or terminal and navigate to the htdocs directory in your XAMPP installation, typically found at C:xampphtdocs.

Use Composer to create a new Laravel project by running the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel my-laravel-app

Configuring the Environment

Change into your newly created Laravel project directory:

cd my-laravel-app

Copy the .env.example file to .env using the following command:

cp .env.example .env

Generate an application key:

php artisan key:generate

Configuring the Database

Open the .env file in a text editor and update the following database settings:

DB_CONNECTIONmysql
DB_HOST127.0.0.1
DB_PORT3306
DB_DATABASEyour_database_name
DB_USERNAMEroot
DB_PASSWORD

Create the database in phpMyAdmin accessible at http://localhost/phpmyadmin.

Running Laravel

To start the development server, run the following command:

php artisan serve

The server will run by default at http://localhost:8000. You can access your Laravel application by opening this URL in your web browser.

If you want to access your Laravel application via XAMPP like http://localhost/my-laravel-app/public, follow these steps to set up a virtual host:

Virtual Host Setup

Open the file located in C:xamppapacheconfextra and add the following configuration:

DocumentRoot C:/xampp/htdocs/my-laravel-app/public ServerName my-laravel-app.test Directory C:/xampp/htdocs/my-laravel-app/public AllowOverride All Require all granted /Directory

Update your hosts file located at C:WindowsSystem32driversetchosts to include:

127.0.0.1 my-laravel-app.test

Restart Apache from the XAMPP control panel.

Conclusion

You have now successfully installed and configured Laravel on your XAMPP server. With Laravel, you can begin building powerful and maintainable web applications.