Getting Started with Laravel 10: Your Quick Guide

[NOTE: Laravel is updated every year, so Laravel 10 came out in 2023 and Laravel 11 in 2024. It’s usually fairly easy to update to the next version of Laravel, so you needn’t worry about the version you start with as long as it is fairly recent – up to 2 versions ago is usually fine.]

Laravel 10 is a popular PHP framework known for its elegant syntax and robust features, making it an excellent choice for web developers venturing into the world of modern web application development. As a wrapper for PHP, Laravel provides numerous tools and packages that simplify common tasks and boost productivity, allowing developers to build complex applications more efficiently. Before diving into Laravel, be sure to have a good understanding of PHP as a prerequisite.

In order to get started with Laravel 10, developers need to install the latest version and set up their local environment. Laravel simplifies routing and offers powerful tools such as Eloquent ORM for handling databases, Blade for templating, and Artisan CLI for executing commands and generating code. Furthermore, Laravel 10 comes with built-in authentication and authorization features, making it a secure option for web application development.

Testing and extending Laravel applications are made easy with dedicated tools like Laravel Dusk and the ability to create custom packages. As Laravel continues to evolve, it offers a promising future for developers looking forward to building feature-rich, scalable, and maintainable web applications.

Key Takeaways

• Laravel 10 is a powerful PHP framework that simplifies web application development with elegant syntax and features.
• Essential aspects of Laravel 10 include environment setup, routing, database management, and built-in authentication.
• The Laravel ecosystem provides tools for testing and extending applications, ensuring a promising future for web developers.

Installing Laravel 10

In this section, we will guide you through the installation process of Laravel 10 on different operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Just follow the instructions for your specific operating system to get started.

Windows Installation

To install Laravel 10 on a Windows machine, you need to follow these steps:

1. Install Composer, a dependency management tool for PHP that will enable you to download and install Laravel and its required components.
2. Open a terminal or command prompt and run the following command to globally install Laravel Installer: composer global require laravel/installer
3. Add the Composer’s system-wide vendor binary directory to your $PATH variable by editing your system environment variables.
4. Create a new Laravel project with the following command: laravel new project-name

Now, you have successfully installed Laravel 10 on your Windows machine.

MacOS Installation

For installing Laravel 10 on MacOS, the steps are as follows:

1. Make sure you have Composer installed on your Mac.
2. Open Terminal and run the following command to install Laravel Installer globally: composer global require laravel/installer
3. Add the Composer’s global binary directory to your $PATH in your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshrc file. export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin"
4. Create a new Laravel project using the following command: laravel new project-name

Laravel 10 is now installed on your MacOS system.

Linux Installation

For installing Laravel 10 on Linux, follow these steps:

1. Firstly, ensure that Composer is installed on your Linux system.
2. Open a terminal window and run this command to install Laravel Installer globally: composer global require laravel/installer
3. Update your shell configuration file (such as ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.zshrc) to include the Composer’s global binary directory in the $PATH variable: export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin"
4. Finally, create a new Laravel project with this command: laravel new project-name

Laravel 10 is now installed and ready to use on your Linux system.

Laravel 10 Environment Setup

Setting up .Env

When starting with Laravel 10, the first thing to do is to set up the .env file, which contains essential configuration information for your application. This file allows you to store environment-specific details like database credentials, server connection settings, and API keys. To get started, simply make a copy of the .env.example file provided by Laravel, and rename it to .env.

cp .env.example .env

Edit the .env file using your favorite text editor, and input the necessary details for your environment. Be sure to change the APP_ENV, APP_DEBUG, and APP_URL values, along with the database settings. Remember to keep your .env file secure and never commit it to version control to prevent sensitive information exposure.

Local Development Server Setup

Now that you have the .env file configured, it’s time to set up a local development server. Laravel 10 makes it simple by providing a built-in server that you can start with just a single command:

php artisan serve

Running this command will start a local development server on the default http://127.0.0.1:8000 address. If you need to use a different address or port, you can specify them with the --host and --port options:

php artisan serve --host=192.168.1.2 --port=8080

With the local development server running, you can now access your Laravel 10 application in your browser and start building your project. Don’t forget to regularly consult the official Laravel documentation for guidance and best practices, and enjoy the friendly Laravel community as you delve into the framework’s rich ecosystem.

Handling Laravel 10 Routes

Basic Routing

Laravel makes it incredibly easy to define routes for your web applications. Basic routing in Laravel 10 involves defining a route in the routes/web.php file. You can use the Route::get method to create a simple route that returns a view or response. For example, to create a route for the home page, you might write:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('welcome');
});

This code snippet defines a route for the root URL (“/”) and associates it with a closure that returns the “welcome” view. Laravel supports different HTTP methods, like Route::post, Route::put, and Route::delete, allowing you to handle different types of requests easily.

Advanced Routing

Laravel 10 also offers advanced routing features, such as route parameters, route groups, and middleware. Route parameters allow you to capture values from the URL and pass them to your route handler. For example, you can capture a user’s ID from the URL like this:

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

Route groups allow you to group routes that share common characteristics, such as middleware, namespaces, or prefixes. Middleware serves as a layer between the client’s request and your application’s response. They can control access, modify the request, or perform any other processing that needs to be done before or after the request is handled. To create a route group with middleware, use the following syntax:

Route::middleware(['auth'])->group(function () {
    Route::get('/dashboard', function () {
        return view('dashboard');
    });
});

This code snippet illustrates how to apply the “auth” middleware to a route group, protecting the /dashboard route and requiring authentication.

In summary, Laravel 10 allows you to easily define routes and handle various request types in your web application, from basic routes to more advanced scenarios. Using routing features like route parameters, route groups, and middleware helps you build flexible and powerful web applications with Laravel.

Working with Databases in Laravel 10

Database Configuration

When getting started with Laravel 10, configuring your database is one of the first essential steps. Laravel supports a variety of databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and SQL Server. To configure your database, you’ll need to edit the .env file located in the root directory of your Laravel project. In this file, you can set your database connection details by providing values for DB_CONNECTION, DB_HOST, DB_PORT, DB_DATABASE, DB_USERNAME, and DB_PASSWORD. For example, if you’re working with a MySQL database:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=my_database
DB_USERNAME=my_username
DB_PASSWORD=my_password

Remember to replace “my_database”, “my_username”, and “my_password” with your actual database name, username, and password.

Database Migrations

Migrations are like version control for your database, allowing you to modify your database schema in a structured and organized way. Laravel simplifies the process of creating and managing migrations.

To create a migration, use the make:migration Artisan command, followed by the migration name that describes the action. For example, to create a “users” table:

php artisan make:migration create_users_table

This command generates a new migration file in the “database/migrations” directory. Open the generated file and you’ll find two methods: up() and down(). The up() method is used to add new tables, columns, or indexes to your database, while the down() method should reverse the actions performed by the up() method.

Here’s an example of how a migration file might look like:

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

class CreateUsersTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('name');
            $table->string('email')->unique();
            $table->string('password');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

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

After creating your migration, you can run it using the migrate Artisan command:

php artisan migrate

This command will run any pending migrations, updating your database schema accordingly. If you need to rollback the last batch of migrations, you can use the migrate:rollback command:

php artisan migrate:rollback

By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to effectively working with databases in Laravel 10.

Components of Laravel 10

Laravel 10 offers several powerful components that make it a popular choice for developers. In this section, we will look at three key components: Blade Templates, Middleware, and Eloquent Models.

Blade Templates

Blade is Laravel’s built-in template engine, which provides a clean and elegant syntax for designing views. It allows developers to easily combine static HTML and dynamic PHP content, making it easy to create dynamic web applications. Some of the features offered by Blade include:

• Simple and readable syntax
• Template inheritance and layout management
• Control structures like loops and conditionals
• Automatic escaping of potentially unsafe data
• Custom directives for additional functionality

Blade takes care of compiling your templates into PHP code, ensuring optimal performance while retaining its user-friendly nature.

Middleware

Middleware is an integral part of the Laravel 10 architecture, providing a way to filter HTTP requests before they reach your application’s core components. Middleware enables you to perform various tasks like:

• Authentication and authorization
• Input validation and sanitization
• Logging and error handling
• Response formatting and caching

Laravel 10 ships with a variety of pre-built middleware ready to use, but developers can also create custom middleware to suit their specific needs. Middleware can be applied globally to all routes or individually to specific routes, making it a flexible and powerful tool to enhance your Laravel-based web applications.

Eloquent Models

Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) is Laravel 10’s default database abstraction layer, which offers an expressive and intuitive syntax for interacting with your database. Eloquent allows you to work with your database using familiar object-oriented principles, delivering significant benefits such as:

• Automatic mapping of database tables to Eloquent model classes
• Clean and expressive query syntax
• Support for relationships between models (e.g., one-to-one, one-to-many, etc.)
• Eager and lazy loading of related data
• Automatic handling of timestamps and other common tasks

By leveraging Eloquent, developers can focus on their application’s core logic without getting bogged down in the complexities of raw SQL queries and manual database management.

In summary, Laravel 10’s Blade Templates, Middleware, and Eloquent Models are key components that make it an efficient and user-friendly framework for web application development. By mastering these components, developers can create robust and maintainable Laravel applications with ease.

Authentication in Laravel 10

Authentication Scaffolding

Laravel offers a simple and friendly way to set up authentication for your applications. With the release of Laravel 10, the process is even more streamlined and powerful. The new authentication system is built using Laravel’s powerful Sanctum package. Sanctum allows for both token-based and session-based authentication, giving developers more flexibility for their needs.

To get started with authentication in Laravel 10, simply run the laravel/ui artisan command to generate the necessary scaffolding. This command will create the necessary routes, controllers, and views for authentication.

composer require laravel/ui
php artisan ui bootstrap --auth

After running these commands, you’ll notice that the registration and login pages are now available in your application.

Access Control

Now that the authentication scaffolding is in place, it’s time to set up access control within your Laravel application. Laravel conveniently provides a built-in system for managing user authorities called middleware. Middleware lets you define certain requirements that must be met before a request can continue to the next level of your application.

For example, you can create a middleware specifically for authenticated users, ensuring they have access to specific parts of your application. You can apply this middleware to routes, controllers, or even individual methods within controllers.

Here is a brief example of how to protect a route:

Route::middleware(['auth'])->group(function () {
    Route::get('/dashboard', function () {
        // Only authenticated users will have access to this route
    });
});

In summary, Laravel 10 makes setting up authentication in your application a breeze! By leveraging the power of Laravel’s Sanctum, authentication scaffolding, and built-in middleware system, you can easily manage user registration, login, and access control for your applications. Just follow these steps and you’ll have a secure, user-friendly platform for your web projects.

Developing Web Applications with Laravel 10

Building Simple CRUD Application

With Laravel 10, developing web applications has become even simpler and more enjoyable for developers. One of the core functionalities that many web applications require is CRUD – Create, Read, Update, and Delete. Laravel 10 provides a set of tools and conventions to help you efficiently create CRUD applications with ease.

To start building a simple CRUD application, you need to set up the database connection, create the necessary tables and fields, and set up models for each table. Laravel’s Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) makes it very easy to interact with your database tables.

Once your models are set up, you can create controllers to handle the business logic of your application. A typical controller in a CRUD application handles the creation, retrieval, updating, and deletion of records. With Laravel’s powerful routing system, you can map HTTP requests to the appropriate controller methods so that your users can interact with your application.

Laravel 10 also includes Blade, a powerful templating engine that allows you to quickly craft intuitive and expressive user interfaces. You can create templates for each of your CRUD actions (e.g., create, edit, and listings) and leverage Blade’s components, directives, and inheritance to make your views clean and maintainable.

Package Development

Besides building CRUD web applications, Laravel 10 also excels at facilitating package development. Packages are reusable pieces of code that can be easily shared with others or used across multiple projects. As a developer, you might find yourself using various Laravel packages or even developing your own to extend the functionality of your application or help others in the Laravel community.

Laravel has a built-in package discovery system that lets you easily integrate third-party packages into your project. When developing your own packages, you simply need to follow the recommended folder structure, configure your composer.json file and register the required service providers or facades.

Creating Laravel packages is a great way to modularize your code and share it with other developers. By leveraging Laravel’s framework convention and ecosystem, you can quickly and easily develop packages that add features, integrate with external APIs, or build new functionality on top of Laravel’s core components.

In conclusion, Laravel 10 offers developers a friendly, third-person approach to creating efficient web applications covering all aspects of CRUD functionality and package development. With its elegant syntax, powerful ORM, and versatile package system, Laravel 10 is a great choice for any web development project.

Testing in Laravel 10

Unit Testing

Unit testing is an essential part of any Laravel application. In Laravel 10, you can create unit tests using the built-in testing framework, which makes it simple and straightforward. To create a basic unit test, use the php artisan make:test command followed by the test name and the --unit flag. This generates a test class within the tests/Unit directory, ensuring a structured organization for your test cases.

In Laravel 10, PHPUnit comes preconfigured for testing your application. The framework offers various helper methods such as assertSee, assertStatus, and assertRedirect that make writing unit tests simpler and more readable. It is important to test individual pieces of your code, like functions and methods, in isolation from the rest of your application. This ensures that your code works as expected and helps prevent future bugs.

Feature Testing

Feature testing in Laravel 10 allows you to test how various parts of your application interact with each other. Typically, feature tests focus on testing responses from HTTP requests and user interactions with your application’s features. To create a feature test, use the php artisan make:test command without the --unit flag. Laravel will generate a new feature test class within the tests/Feature directory.

When testing your application’s features, Laravel 10 provides numerous tools to simplify the process. The actingAs method, for example, allows you to authenticate a user within your tests, enabling you to test routes and functionality that require authentication. You can also make HTTP requests (like GET, POST, and PUT) and assert on the responses using built-in helper methods.

In summary, Laravel 10 offers a comprehensive environment for both unit and feature testing. Using the provided helper methods and tools, you can efficiently test your application’s code, ensuring its reliability and stability. Keep in mind that keeping your tests organized and utilizing a friendly tone in your documentation can greatly enhance the experience for fellow developers.

Extending Laravel 10

In this section, we will discuss two popular ways to extend Laravel 10 by using Vue.js and Alpine.js for building dynamic frontend components.

Using Vue.js

Vue.js is a widely used JavaScript framework that is gaining popularity in the Laravel community due to its simplicity, readability, and component-driven approach. Laravel 10 includes out-of-the-box support for Vue.js, making it easier to integrate and develop frontend components.

To get started with Vue.js in Laravel 10, first install the required dependencies using the following command:

npm install vue

Next, create a new Vue component in the resources/js/components directory. For example, create a file named ExampleComponent.vue and add the following content:

<template>
  <div>
    <h1>Hello, {{ name }}!</h1>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  data() {
    return {
      name: 'Laravel 10 User'
    };
  },
};
</script>

Now, you can register and use the newly created Vue component in your Laravel application, like:

import ExampleComponent from './components/ExampleComponent.vue';

const app = new Vue({
  el: '#app',
  components: {
    ExampleComponent
  }
});

Using Alpine.js

Another great option for extending Laravel 10 in frontend development is Alpine.js. It is a lightweight and flexible JavaScript framework that offers a similar experience to Vue.js with a smaller footprint.

To start using Alpine.js in Laravel 10, first include it in your project by adding the following script tag in your HTML file:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@ryangjchandler/alpinejs" defer></script>

With Alpine.js, you can create simple and interactive components within your HTML blade templates:

<div x-data="{ counter: 0 }">
  <h1 x-text="counter"></h1>
  <button @click="counter++">Increase</button>
  <button @click="counter--">Decrease</button>
</div>

In the example above, x-data defines a custom state for the component, and x-text binds the element’s text content to the provided value. The @click event listeners handle user interactions with the buttons.

Both Vue.js and Alpine.js offer various features that help you extend functionality and improve the user experience when working with Laravel 10.

Future of Laravel 10

Inertia

Inertia is a promising new addition to the Laravel ecosystem, offering a modern approach to building web applications. It allows developers to create single-page applications (SPAs) using popular front-end frameworks like React, Vue, or Svelte without needing to write complex APIs. This results in a smoother, user-friendly experience. With Laravel 10, Inertia is expected to gain even more traction and popularity among developers as they embrace this approach to create high-performance applications. Additionally, its seamless integration with Laravel is poised to simplify the overall development process.

Livewire

Livewire, another significant feature in Laravel 10, is an innovative library that unifies backend and frontend development. It enables developers to write dynamic, real-time interfaces using native Laravel components without relying on JavaScript-heavy solutions. This fusion of server-side and client-side frameworks results in more intuitive, user-friendly applications with fewer development dependencies and a cleaner codebase. As Laravel 10 continues to evolve, Livewire will further streamline the development experience, making it a powerful tool in the Laravel ecosystem for building responsive, interactive web applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the steps to install Laravel 10 using Composer?

To install Laravel 10 using Composer, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have Composer installed on your computer.
2. Open your terminal or command prompt.
3. Run the following command to install Laravel’s installer: composer global require laravel/installer
4. Once the installer is installed, create a new Laravel project using the command: laravel new project-name
5. Change to the newly created project directory: cd project-name
6. Install all required dependencies using Composer: composer install
7. After the installation is complete, you can start your local development server using the php artisan serve command.

How do I set up a Laravel Breeze project?

Setting up a Laravel Breeze project is straightforward. Follow these steps:

1. Install Laravel Breeze using the command: composer require laravel/breeze --dev
2. Run the installation command for Laravel Breeze: php artisan breeze:install
3. Compile your assets using the command: npm install && npm run dev
4. Finally, run your Laravel development server using the php artisan serve command.

Is Laravel 10 suitable for beginners?

Laravel is usually suitable for beginners, thanks to its clean syntax and extensive documentation. Regardless of the version, Laravel continues to evolve while maintaining its goal of making web development more enjoyable and approachable. Beginners can refer to the Laravel documentation to get a deep look at all its functionality.

What are the best resources to learn Laravel 10?

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• Laravel official documentation
• Laravel YouTube channel
• Laravel-related books like Laravel: Up & Running
• Online tutorials, courses, or blog posts from established Laravel developers and community members

Remember to always refer to the official documentation for the latest and most accurate information on Laravel.