Setting up the environment

Remember, no matter how you have configured your environment to develop web applications with PHP and Laravel, keep the main server requirements in mind, and you will be able to follow the examples in this chapter.

It is important to note that some operating systems do not have PHP installed. As this is the case with Windows machines, here are some alternatives for you to create your development environment:

• HOMESTEAD (recommended by Laravel documentation): https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/homestead
• MAMP: https://www.mamp.info/en/
• XAMPP: https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html
• WAMP SERVER (only for Windows OS): http://www.wampserver.com/en/
• PHPDOCKER: https://www.docker.com/what-docker

Installing Composer package manager

Laravel uses Composer, a dependency manager for PHP, very similar to Node Package Manager (NPM) for Node.js projects, PIP for Python, and Bundler for Ruby. Let's see what the official documentation says about it:

"A Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you."

So, let's install Composer, as follows:

Go to https://getcomposer.org/download/ and follow the instructions for your platform.

You can get more information at https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md.

Note that you can install Composer on your machine locally or globally; don't worry about it right now. Choose what is easiest for you.

All PHP projects that use Composer have a file called composer.json at the root project, which looks similar to the following:

{
 "require": {
     "laravel/framework": "5.*.*",
 }
}

This is also very similar to the package.json file on Node.js and Angular applications, as we will see later in this book.

Here's a helpful link about the basic commands: https://getcomposer.org/doc/01-basic-usage.md

Installing Docker

We will use Docker in this chapter. Even though the official documentation of Laravel suggests the use of Homestead with virtual machines and Vagrant, we chose to use Docker because it's fast and easy to start, and our main focus is on Laravel's core concepts.

You can find more information about Docker at https://www.docker.com/what-docker.

As the Docker documentation states:

Docker is the company driving the container movement and the only container platform provider to address every application across the hybrid cloud. Today’s businesses are under pressure to digitally transform, but are constrained by existing applications and infrastructure while rationalizing an increasingly diverse portfolio of clouds, datacenters, and application architectures. Docker enables true independence between applications and infrastructure and developers and IT ops to unlock their potential and creates a model for better collaboration and innovation.

Let's install Docker, as follows:

1. Go to https://docs.docker.com/install/.
2. Choose your platform and follow the installation steps.
3. If you have any trouble, check the getting started link at https://docs.docker.com/get-started/.

As we are using Docker containers and images to start our application and won't get into how Docker works behind the scenes, here is a short list of some Docker commands:

Command:	Description:
docker ps	Show running containers
docker ps -a	Show all containers
docker start	Start a container
docker stop	Stop a container
docker-compose up -d	Start containers in background
docker-compose stop	Stop all containers on docker-compose.yml file
docker-compose start	Start all containers on docker-compose.yml file
docker-compose kill	Kill all containers on docker-compose.yml file
docker-compose logs	Log all containers on docker-compose.yml file

You can check the whole list of Docker commands at https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/docker/. And Docker-compose commands at https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/overview/#command-options-overview-and-help.

Configuring PHPDocker.io

PHPDocker.io is a simple tool that helps us to build PHP applications using the Docker/Container concept with Compose. It's very easy to understand and use; so, let's look at what we need to do:

1. Go to https://phpdocker.io/.
2. Click on the Generator link.
3. Fill out the information, as in the following screenshot.
4. Click on the Generate project archive button and save the folder:

PHPDocker interface

The database configuration is as per the following screenshot:

Database configuration

Note that we are using the latest version of the MYSQL database in the preceding configuration, but you can choose whatever version you prefer. In the following examples, the database version will not matter.

Setting up PHPDocker and Laravel

Now that we have filled in the previous information and downloaded the file for our machine, let's begin setting up our application so as to delve deeper into the directory structure of a Laravel application.

Execute the following steps:

1. Open bash/Terminal/cmd.
2. Go to Users/yourname on Mac and Linux, or C:/ on Windows.

3. Open your Terminal inside the folder and type the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel chapter-01

At the end of your Terminal window, you will see the following result:

Writing lock file
Generating autoload files
> Illuminate\Foundation\ComposerScripts::postUpdate
> php artisan optimize
Generating optimized class loader
php artisan key:generate

4. In the Terminal window, type:

cd chapter-01 && ls

The results will be as follows:

Terminal window output

Congratulations! You have your first Laravel application, built with the Composer package manager.

Now, it's time to join our application with the file downloaded from PHPDocker (our PHP/MySQL Docker screenshot). To do so, follow the next steps.

5. Grab the downloaded archive, hands-on-full-stack-web-development-with-angular-6-and-laravel-5.zip, and unzip it.
6. Copy all of the folder content (a phpdocker folder and a file, docker-compose.yml).
7. Open the chapter-01 folder and paste the content.

Now, inside the chapter-01 folder, we will see the following files:

chapter-01 folder structure

Let's check to make sure that everything will go well with our configuration.

8. Open your Terminal window and type the following command:

docker-compose up -d

It's important to remember that at this point, you need to have Docker up and running on your machine. If you are completely new to how to run Docker on your machine, you can find more information at https://github.com/docker/labs/tree/master/beginner/.

9. Note that this command may take more time to create and build all of the containers. The results will be as follows:

Docker containers up and running

The preceding screenshot indicates that we have started all containers successfully: memcached, webserver (Nginx), mysql, and php-fpm.

Open your browser and type http://localhost:8081; you should see the welcome page for Laravel.

At this point, it is time to open our sample project in a text editor and check all of the Laravel folders and files. You can choose the editor that you are used to, or, if you prefer, you can use the editor that we will describe in the next section.

Installing VS Code text editor

For this chapter, and throughout the book, we will be using Visual Studio Code (VS Code), a free and highly configurable multiplatform text editor. It is also very useful for working with projects in Angular and TypeScript.

Install VS Code as follows:

1. Go to the download page and choose your platform at https://code.visualstudio.com/Download.
2. Follow the installation steps for your platform.

VS Code has a vibrant community with tons of extensions. You can research and find extensions at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/VSCode. In the next chapters, we will install and use some of them.

For now, just install VS Code icons from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=robertohuertasm.vscode-icons.