Getting Started
A zombie developer is very slow at setting up a new project, whereas a Laravel developer can run a few commands to set up a new project in a matter of seconds!
Being aware of one's environment is crucial to surviving the zombie developer apocalypse. In this section, we will briefly go over how to setup your local environment.
Quick note: We will not go into full detail of installing system requirements such as PHP, MySQL, and Apache. Instead, we are just going to give a quick overview on setting up your local development environment so that way we can start getting into the code as soon as possible.
Your Local Development Environment
A local environment, also referred to as the "development environment", is when you work on your web app from your computer. When you are ready to make your application available for the world to see you will move your code to another server referred to as the "production environment".
So, when we set up your local development environment we are referring to setting up the required applications to run a Laravel app on your computer.
A basic local development environment for Laravel typically requires 3 applications, which are:
- Apache or Nginx (the web server for your application)
- MySQL (the database for your application)
- PHP (the server-side scripting language for your application)
There are many programs for each operating system that will install all these applications for you. Just to name a few there is MAMP, WampServer, and XAMPP. You can feel free to check out the links below for these applications:
- https://www.mamp.info/en/ (Mac and Windows)
- http://www.wampserver.com/en/ (Windows)
- https://www.apachefriends.org/ (Mac, Windows, and Linux)
Be sure to read the docs for all the system requirements at https://laravel.com/docs.
There are also 2 other ways to get your local development environment setup. One is referred to as installing a virtual machine which already has all the system requirements installed. This is called Laravel Homestead and you can learn more about installing this at https://laravel.com/docs/homestead.
The other method is called Laravel Valet which is a Mac only development environment. Laravel Valet makes getting started with a new laravel app faster than ever before. You can learn more about setting up the Laravel Valet development environment by visiting https://laravel.com/docs/valet.
There is no right or wrong way to setup your local development environment as long as you meet the minimum system requirements for Laravel. Find a way that works for you, so you can start building the next greatest web app!
Okay, Let's move on to Composer and the Laravel Installer.