What is Laravel and how to install it?

Laravel is a web application framework with an expressive, elegant syntax. Development is quite enjoyable, and quite a creative experience. Laravel attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

Laravel aims to make the development process a pleasing one for the developer without sacrificing application functionality. Happy developers make the best code. It is a combination of the very best we have seen in other web frameworks, including frameworks implemented in other languages, such as Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET MVC, and Sinatra.

Laravel is accessible, yet powerful, providing powerful tools needed for large, robust applications. A superb inversion of control container, expressive migration system, and tightly integrated unit testing support give you the tools you need to build an application with which you are tasked.

That's all blabbering about how great it is, but seriously as a perspective of a programmer, you would love what possibilities it brings with it. So, without wasting any time further why not just go on to downloading and installing Laravel.

STEP #1

You would need composer before anything else. If you don't have composer installed, then here's a complete walkthrough on how to download it. 

STEP #2

Now, with composer installed you would need your localhost server installed. In my case, I'm using XAMPP Server.

STEP #3

Go to your htdocs folder or whichever folder your project files are saved. In the case of XAMPP Server, it is htdocs.

STEP #4

Type 'cmd' in file explorer location box, to open up the exact location in Command Prompt. (You can directly do it in Command Prompt anyway by, but it's a shortcut).

STEP #5

Type in the command to download Laravel directory, "composer create-project laravel/laravel YourProjectName"

You can choose whatever name you want to, but without any spaces.

STEP #6

Wait for some time until its fully downloaded, it took some time as there are a lot of directories to download.

STEP #7

After everything downloaded, you will get a successful message and as well as a directory in htdocs with the name you gave in the command.

STEP #8

Select your project directory by typing "cd YourProjectName".

STEP #9

Type "php artisan serve" to start Laravel Framework, remember you have to keep Command Prompt window open until you work on your project.

So, Laravel started and now you can access it on your localhost:8000, and if you are confused by - what "http://127.0.0.1:8000" means?

Well, it's your IP address for localhost you type in localhost or "127.0.0.1", both cases are the same.

STEP #10

You're done now as everything is running and working fine. But, just to make sure access localhost:8000.

If you reach this page on accessing localhost:8000, well then congrats you are all good now.

Now, go and work on your dream web app by a beautiful and elegant way of coding.

Thanks for reading.