Laravel Essentials

Laravel is an elegant PHP framework designed for web developers who need a simple, elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. It follows the MVC pattern and provides a clean, expressive syntax.

Before installing Laravel, make sure your environment meets these requirements:

• ✓ PHP >= 8.0
• ✓ Composer
• ✓ Web Server (Apache/Nginx)
• ✓ Database (MySQL/PostgreSQL)
• ✓ Node.js & NPM (for frontend)

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Create a new Laravel project

   composer create-project laravel/laravel myproject

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2. Navigate to your project directory

   cd myproject

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3. Start the development server

   php artisan serve

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4. Configure your database in .env file

   DB_CONNECTION=mysql
   DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
   DB_PORT=3306
   DB_DATABASE=laravel
   DB_USERNAME=root
   DB_PASSWORD=

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5. Run migrations

   php artisan migrate

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Routes in Laravel are defined in the routes/web.php file for web routes and routes/api.php for API routes.

// Simple route with closure
Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('welcome');
});

// Route with parameters
Route::get('/user/{id}', function ($id) {
    return 'User ID: ' . $id;
});

use App\Http\Controllers\UserController;

// Single action
Route::get('/users', [UserController::class, 'index']);

// Resource controller (CRUD)
Route::resource('products', ProductController::class);

// Group with middleware and prefix
Route::middleware(['auth'])->prefix('admin')->group(function () {
    Route::get('/dashboard', [AdminController::class, 'dashboard']);
    Route::resource('products', ProductController::class);
});

Migrations are like version control for your database schema. They allow you to define and share the application's database schema definition.

Creating Migrations

php artisan make:migration create_products_table

Migration Structure

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class CreateProductsTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('products', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('name');
            $table->text('description')->nullable();
            $table->decimal('price', 10, 2);
            $table->integer('stock');
            $table->boolean('is_active')->default(true);
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('products');
    }
}

Running Migrations

Here's a simplified example of implementing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations in Laravel:

php artisan make:model Product -m

php artisan make:controller ProductController --resource

// In routes/web.php
Route::resource('products', ProductController::class);

// Index - Show all products
public function index()
{
    $products = Product::latest()->paginate(10);
    return view('products.index', compact('products'));
}

// Create - Show create form
public function create()
{
    return view('products.create');
}

// Store - Save new product
public function store(Request $request)
{
    $validated = $request->validate([
        'name' => 'required|string|max:255',
        'price' => 'required|numeric|min:0',
        'stock' => 'required|integer|min:0',
    ]);
    
    Product::create($validated);
    
    return redirect()->route('products.index')
        ->with('success', 'Product created successfully');
}

// Show - Display a product
public function show(Product $product)
{
    return view('products.show', compact('product'));
}

// Edit - Show edit form
public function edit(Product $product)
{
    return view('products.edit', compact('product'));
}

// Update - Save changes
public function update(Request $request, Product $product)
{
    $validated = $request->validate([
        'name' => 'required|string|max:255',
        'price' => 'required|numeric|min:0',
        'stock' => 'required|integer|min:0',
    ]);
    
    $product->update($validated);
    
    return redirect()->route('products.index')
        ->with('success', 'Product updated successfully');
}

// Destroy - Delete a product
public function destroy(Product $product)
{
    $product->delete();
    
    return redirect()->route('products.index')
        ->with('success', 'Product deleted successfully');
}

When deploying Laravel to production, follow these steps:

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false

composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev

php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache

chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache