01/02/25, 21:01 Installation - Laravel 11.

x - The PHP Framework For Web Artisans

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VERSION

Search 11.x

Installation
# Meet Laravel

# Why Laravel?

# Creating a Laravel Application

# Installing PHP and the Laravel Installer

# Creating an Application

# Initial Configuration

# Environment Based Configuration

# Databases and Migrations

# Directory Configuration

# Local Installation Using Herd

# Herd on macOS

# Herd on Windows

# Docker Installation Using Sail

# Sail on macOS

# Sail on Windows

# Sail on Linux

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# Choosing Your Sail Services

# IDE Support

# Next Steps

# Laravel the Full Stack Framework

# Laravel the API Backend

# Meet Laravel
Laravel is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. A web
framework provides a structure and starting point for creating your application,
allowing you to focus on creating something amazing while we sweat the details.

Laravel strives to provide an amazing developer experience while providing

powerful features such as thorough dependency injection, an expressive database
abstraction layer, queues and scheduled jobs, unit and integration testing, and
more.

Whether you are new to PHP web frameworks or have years of experience, Laravel
is a framework that can grow with you. We'll help you take your first steps as a web
developer or give you a boost as you take your expertise to the next level. We can't
wait to see what you build.

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New to Laravel? Check out the Laravel Bootcamp for a hands-on

tour of the framework while we walk you through building your
first Laravel application.

# Why Laravel?
There are a variety of tools and frameworks available to you when building a web
application. However, we believe Laravel is the best choice for building modern,
full-stack web applications.

A Progressive Framework

We like to call Laravel a "progressive" framework. By that, we mean that Laravel

grows with you. If you're just taking your first steps into web development, Laravel's
vast library of documentation, guides, and video tutorials will help you learn the
ropes without becoming overwhelmed.

If you're a senior developer, Laravel gives you robust tools for dependency
injection, unit testing, queues, real-time events, and more. Laravel is fine-tuned for
building professional web applications and ready to handle enterprise work loads.

A Scalable Framework

Laravel is incredibly scalable. Thanks to the scaling-friendly nature of PHP and

Laravel's built-in support for fast, distributed cache systems like Redis, horizontal
scaling with Laravel is a breeze. In fact, Laravel applications have been easily
scaled to handle hundreds of millions of requests per month.

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Need extreme scaling? Platforms like Laravel Vapor allow you to run your Laravel
application at nearly limitless scale on AWS's latest serverless technology.

A Community Framework

Laravel combines the best packages in the PHP ecosystem to offer the most robust
and developer friendly framework available. In addition, thousands of talented
developers from around the world have contributed to the framework. Who knows,
maybe you'll even become a Laravel contributor.

# Creating a Laravel Application

# Installing PHP and the Laravel Installer

Before creating your first Laravel application, make sure that your local machine
has PHP, Composer, and the Laravel installer installed. In addition, you should
Prologue install either Node and NPM or Bun so that you can compile your application's
frontend assets.
Getting Started

Installation If you don't have PHP and Composer installed on your local machine, the following
commands will install PHP, Composer, and the Laravel installer on macOS,
Configuration
Windows, or Linux:
Directory Structure

Frontend macOS Windows PowerShell Linux

Starter Kits
# Run as administrator...
Deployment

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Architecture Concepts Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager

The Basics

Digging Deeper After running one of the commands above, you should restart your terminal
session. To update PHP, Composer, and the Laravel installer after installing them
Security
via php.new , you can re-run the command in your terminal.
Database
If you already have PHP and Composer installed, you may install the Laravel
Eloquent ORM
installer via Composer:
Testing

composer global require laravel/installer

Packages

API Documentation

Laravel Nova: The next generation For a fully-featured, graphical PHP installation and management
of Nova is now available. experience, check out Laravel Herd.

# Creating an Application
After you have installed PHP, Composer, and the Laravel installer, you're ready to
create a new Laravel application. The Laravel installer will prompt you to select
your preferred testing framework, database, and starter kit:

laravel new example-app

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Once the application has been created, you can start Laravel's local development
server, queue worker, and Vite development server using the dev Composer script:

cd example-app
npm install && npm run build
composer run dev

Once you have started the development server, your application will be accessible
in your web browser at http://localhost:8000. Next, you're ready to start taking
your next steps into the Laravel ecosystem. Of course, you may also want to
configure a database.

If you would like a head start when developing your Laravel

application, consider using one of our starter kits. Laravel's
starter kits provide backend and frontend authentication
scaffolding for your new Laravel application.

# Initial Configuration
All of the configuration files for the Laravel framework are stored in the config
directory. Each option is documented, so feel free to look through the files and get
familiar with the options available to you.

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Laravel needs almost no additional configuration out of the box. You are free to
get started developing! However, you may wish to review the config/app.php file
and its documentation. It contains several options such as timezone and locale
that you may wish to change according to your application.

# Environment Based Configuration

Since many of Laravel's configuration option values may vary depending on
whether your application is running on your local machine or on a production web
server, many important configuration values are defined using the .env file that
exists at the root of your application.

Your .env file should not be committed to your application's source control, since
each developer / server using your application could require a different
environment configuration. Furthermore, this would be a security risk in the event
an intruder gains access to your source control repository, since any sensitive
credentials would be exposed.

For more information about the .env file and environment based
configuration, check out the full configuration documentation.

# Databases and Migrations

Now that you have created your Laravel application, you probably want to store
some data in a database. By default, your application's .env configuration file

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specifies that Laravel will be interacting with an SQLite database.

During the creation of the application, Laravel created a database/database.sqlite

file for you, and ran the necessary migrations to create the application's database
tables.

If you prefer to use another database driver such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, you can
update your .env configuration file to use the appropriate database. For example,
if you wish to use MySQL, update your .env configuration file's DB_* variables like
so:

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

If you choose to use a database other than SQLite, you will need to create the
database and run your application's database migrations:

php artisan migrate

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If you are developing on macOS or Windows and need to install

MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Redis locally, consider using Herd Pro.

# Directory Configuration
Laravel should always be served out of the root of the "web directory" configured
for your web server. You should not attempt to serve a Laravel application out of a
subdirectory of the "web directory". Attempting to do so could expose sensitive
files present within your application.

# Local Installation Using Herd

Laravel Herd is a blazing fast, native Laravel and PHP development environment
for macOS and Windows. Herd includes everything you need to get started with
Laravel development, including PHP and Nginx.

Once you install Herd, you're ready to start developing with Laravel. Herd includes
command line tools for php , composer , laravel , expose , node , npm , and nvm .

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Herd Pro augments Herd with additional powerful features, such

as the ability to create and manage local MySQL, Postgres, and
Redis databases, as well as local mail viewing and log
monitoring.

# Herd on macOS
If you develop on macOS, you can download the Herd installer from the Herd
website. The installer automatically downloads the latest version of PHP and
configures your Mac to always run Nginx in the background.

Herd for macOS uses dnsmasq to support "parked" directories. Any Laravel
application in a parked directory will automatically be served by Herd. By default,
Herd creates a parked directory at ~/Herd and you can access any Laravel
application in this directory on the .test domain using its directory name.

After installing Herd, the fastest way to create a new Laravel application is using
the Laravel CLI, which is bundled with Herd:

cd ~/Herd
laravel new my-app
cd my-app
herd open

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Of course, you can always manage your parked directories and other PHP settings
via Herd's UI, which can be opened from the Herd menu in your system tray.

You can learn more about Herd by checking out the Herd documentation.

# Herd on Windows
You can download the Windows installer for Herd on the Herd website. After the
installation finishes, you can start Herd to complete the onboarding process and
access the Herd UI for the first time.

The Herd UI is accessible by left-clicking on Herd's system tray icon. A right-click

opens the quick menu with access to all tools that you need on a daily basis.

During installation, Herd creates a "parked" directory in your home directory at

%USERPROFILE%\Herd . Any Laravel application in a parked directory will automatically
be served by Herd, and you can access any Laravel application in this directory on
the .test domain using its directory name.

After installing Herd, the fastest way to create a new Laravel application is using
the Laravel CLI, which is bundled with Herd. To get started, open Powershell and
run the following commands:

cd ~\Herd
laravel new my-app
cd my-app
herd open

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You can learn more about Herd by checking out the Herd documentation for
Windows.

# Docker Installation Using Sail

We want it to be as easy as possible to get started with Laravel regardless of your
preferred operating system. So, there are a variety of options for developing and
running a Laravel application on your local machine. While you may wish to
explore these options at a later time, Laravel provides Sail, a built-in solution for
running your Laravel application using Docker.

Docker is a tool for running applications and services in small, light-weight

"containers" which do not interfere with your local machine's installed software or
configuration. This means you don't have to worry about configuring or setting up
complicated development tools such as web servers and databases on your local
machine. To get started, you only need to install Docker Desktop.

Laravel Sail is a light-weight command-line interface for interacting with Laravel's

default Docker configuration. Sail provides a great starting point for building a
Laravel application using PHP, MySQL, and Redis without requiring prior Docker
experience.

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Already a Docker expert? Don't worry! Everything about Sail can

be customized using the docker-compose.yml file included with
Laravel.

# Sail on macOS
If you're developing on a Mac and Docker Desktop is already installed, you can use
a simple terminal command to create a new Laravel application. For example, to
create a new Laravel application in a directory named "example-app", you may
run the following command in your terminal:

curl -s "https://laravel.build/example-app" | bash

Of course, you can change "example-app" in this URL to anything you like - just
make sure the application name only contains alpha-numeric characters, dashes,
and underscores. The Laravel application's directory will be created within the
directory you execute the command from.

Sail installation may take several minutes while Sail's application containers are
built on your local machine.

After the application has been created, you can navigate to the application
directory and start Laravel Sail. Laravel Sail provides a simple command-line
interface for interacting with Laravel's default Docker configuration:

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cd example-app

./vendor/bin/sail up

Once the application's Docker containers have started, you should run your
application's database migrations:

./vendor/bin/sail artisan migrate

Finally, you can access the application in your web browser at: http://localhost.

To continue learning more about Laravel Sail, review its complete

documentation.

# Sail on Windows
Before we create a new Laravel application on your Windows machine, make sure
to install Docker Desktop. Next, you should ensure that Windows Subsystem for
Linux 2 (WSL2) is installed and enabled. WSL allows you to run Linux binary
executables natively on Windows 10. Information on how to install and enable
WSL2 can be found within Microsoft's developer environment documentation.

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After installing and enabling WSL2, you should ensure that

Docker Desktop is configured to use the WSL2 backend.

Next, you are ready to create your first Laravel application. Launch Windows
Terminal and begin a new terminal session for your WSL2 Linux operating system.
Next, you can use a simple terminal command to create a new Laravel
application. For example, to create a new Laravel application in a directory
named "example-app", you may run the following command in your terminal:

curl -s https://laravel.build/example-app | bash

Of course, you can change "example-app" in this URL to anything you like - just
make sure the application name only contains alpha-numeric characters, dashes,
and underscores. The Laravel application's directory will be created within the
directory you execute the command from.

Sail installation may take several minutes while Sail's application containers are
built on your local machine.

After the application has been created, you can navigate to the application
directory and start Laravel Sail. Laravel Sail provides a simple command-line
interface for interacting with Laravel's default Docker configuration:

cd example-app

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./vendor/bin/sail up

Once the application's Docker containers have started, you should run your
application's database migrations:

./vendor/bin/sail artisan migrate

Finally, you can access the application in your web browser at: http://localhost.

To continue learning more about Laravel Sail, review its complete

documentation.

Developing Within WSL2

Of course, you will need to be able to modify the Laravel application files that were
created within your WSL2 installation. To accomplish this, we recommend using
Microsoft's Visual Studio Code editor and their first-party extension for Remote
Development.

Once these tools are installed, you may open any Laravel application by executing
the code . command from your application's root directory using Windows
Terminal.

# Sail on Linux
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If you're developing on Linux and Docker Compose is already installed, you can use
a simple terminal command to create a new Laravel application.

First, if you are using Docker Desktop for Linux, you should execute the following
command. If you are not using Docker Desktop for Linux, you may skip this step:

docker context use default

Then, to create a new Laravel application in a directory named "example-app",

you may run the following command in your terminal:

curl -s https://laravel.build/example-app | bash

Of course, you can change "example-app" in this URL to anything you like - just
make sure the application name only contains alpha-numeric characters, dashes,
and underscores. The Laravel application's directory will be created within the
directory you execute the command from.

Sail installation may take several minutes while Sail's application containers are
built on your local machine.

After the application has been created, you can navigate to the application
directory and start Laravel Sail. Laravel Sail provides a simple command-line
interface for interacting with Laravel's default Docker configuration:

cd example-app

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./vendor/bin/sail up

Once the application's Docker containers have started, you should run your
application's database migrations:

./vendor/bin/sail artisan migrate

Finally, you can access the application in your web browser at: http://localhost.

To continue learning more about Laravel Sail, review its complete

documentation.

# Choosing Your Sail Services

When creating a new Laravel application via Sail, you may use the with query
string variable to choose which services should be configured in your new
application's docker-compose.yml file. Available services include mysql , pgsql ,
mariadb , redis , valkey , memcached , meilisearch , typesense , minio , selenium , and

mailpit :

curl -s "https://laravel.build/example-app?with=mysql,redis" | bash

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If you do not specify which services you would like configured, a default stack of
mysql , redis , meilisearch , mailpit , and selenium will be configured.

You may instruct Sail to install a default Devcontainer by adding the devcontainer
parameter to the URL:

curl -s "https://laravel.build/example-app?with=mysql,redis&devcontainer" | bash

# IDE Support
You are free to use any code editor you wish when developing Laravel applications;
however, PhpStorm offers extensive support for Laravel and its ecosystem,
including Laravel Pint.

In addition, the community maintained Laravel Idea PhpStorm plugin offers a

variety of helpful IDE augmentations, including code generation, Eloquent syntax
completion, validation rule completion, and more.

# Next Steps
Now that you have created your Laravel application, you may be wondering what
to learn next. First, we strongly recommend becoming familiar with how Laravel
works by reading the following documentation:

Request Lifecycle

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Configuration

Directory Structure

Frontend

Service Container

Facades
How you want to use Laravel will also dictate the next steps on your journey. There
are a variety of ways to use Laravel, and we'll explore two primary use cases for the
framework below.

New to Laravel? Check out the Laravel Bootcamp for a hands-on

tour of the framework while we walk you through building your
first Laravel application.

# Laravel the Full Stack Framework

Laravel may serve as a full stack framework. By "full stack" framework we mean
that you are going to use Laravel to route requests to your application and render
your frontend via Blade templates or a single-page application hybrid technology
like Inertia. This is the most common way to use the Laravel framework, and, in our
opinion, the most productive way to use Laravel.

If this is how you plan to use Laravel, you may want to check out our
documentation on frontend development, routing, views, or the Eloquent ORM. In
addition, you might be interested in learning about community packages like

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Livewire and Inertia. These packages allow you to use Laravel as a full-stack
framework while enjoying many of the UI benefits provided by single-page
JavaScript applications.

If you are using Laravel as a full stack framework, we also strongly encourage you
to learn how to compile your application's CSS and JavaScript using Vite.

If you want to get a head start building your application, check

out one of our official application starter kits.

# Laravel the API Backend

Laravel may also serve as an API backend to a JavaScript single-page application
or mobile application. For example, you might use Laravel as an API backend for
your Next.js application. In this context, you may use Laravel to provide
authentication and data storage / retrieval for your application, while also taking
advantage of Laravel's powerful services such as queues, emails, notifications, and
more.

If this is how you plan to use Laravel, you may want to check out our
documentation on routing, Laravel Sanctum, and the Eloquent ORM.

Need a head start scaffolding your Laravel backend and Next.js

frontend? Laravel Breeze offers an API stack as well as a Next.js

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frontend implementation so you can get started in minutes.

Laravel is a web application framework with HIGHLIGHTS RESOURCES PARTNERS ECOSYSTEM

expressive, elegant syntax. We believe
Release Notes Laravel Bootcamp Vehikl Breeze
development must be an enjoyable and creative
experience to be truly fulfilling. Laravel attempts Getting Started Laracasts WebReinvent Cashier
to take the pain out of development by easing
Routing Laravel News Tighten Dusk
common tasks used in most web projects.
Blade Templates Laracon Bacancy Echo

Authentication Laracon AU 64 Robots Envoyer

Authorization Laracon EU Active Logic Forge

Artisan Console Laracon India Adeva Herd

Database Larabelles Black Airplane Horizon

Eloquent ORM Careers Byte 5 Inertia

Testing Jobs Curotec Jetstream

Forums Cyber-Duck Livewire

Trademark DevSquad Nova

Jump24 Octane

Kirschbaum Pennant

Pint

Prompts

Pulse

Reverb

Sail

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Sanctum

Scout

Socialite

Spark

Telescope

Vapor

Laravel is a Trademark of Laravel Holdings Inc.

Copyright © 2011-2025 Laravel Holdings Inc.

Code highlighting provided by Torchlight

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