How to Set Up a New Laravel 11 Project

To Set up a Laravel application project from scratch involves several steps to ensure a robust foundation for your web development needs. Here’s a concise guide to get you started:

1. Install Laravel: Begin by installing Laravel using Composer, a dependency manager for PHP. Open your terminal and run:

   composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel project-name

Replace project-name with your desired project name.

2. Configure Environment: Navigate to your project directory and duplicate the .env.example file as .env. Update database credentials and other environment-specific configurations in .env.
3. Generate Key: Laravel uses an application key for encryption. Generate it using Artisan CLI:

   php artisan key:generate

4. Set Up Database: Configure your database settings in the .env file, then run migrations to create necessary tables:

   php artisan migrate

5. Create Controllers and Models: Use Artisan CLI to generate controllers and models as needed:

   php artisan make:controller NameController
   php artisan make:model Name

6. Routing: Define routes in routes/web.php for handling HTTP requests. Example:

   Route::get('/path', 'ControllerName@method');

7. Views and Blade Templating: Utilize Blade, Laravel’s templating engine, to create dynamic views. Views are stored in resources/views.
8. Authentication (Optional): Laravel provides a simple way to implement authentication scaffolding:

   php artisan make:auth

9. Run Development Server: Start Laravel’s built-in development server:

   php artisan serve

10. Additional Configurations: Depending on your project requirements, configure middleware, services, and other components in respective Laravel files (app/Http/Kernel.php, config directory).
11. Testing: Write and execute unit tests using PHPUnit, Laravel’s testing framework: php artisan test
12. Deploying: When ready to deploy, configure your web server (e.g., Apache, Nginx) to point to the public directory of your Laravel project.

Setting up a Laravel project from scratch offers a streamlined approach to modern web development, leveraging Laravel’s robust features and ecosystem. Customize further with Laravel’s extensive documentation and community resources to enhance functionality and scalability as per project requirements.