How to Setup Laravel Application on Ubuntu & Debian

Laravel is a powerful and popular open-source PHP framework for creating web applications. It is the preferred choice for many developers due to its intuitive syntax, scalability, and reliability. Setting up Laravel on Ubuntu & Debian is relatively easy, and this article will walk you through the steps.

Prerequisites

Before we dive into setting up Laravel, let’s take a look at the prerequisites for doing so. Firstly, you will need a server running Ubuntu or Debian. You will also need to have the latest version of PHP installed on the server. Finally, you will need to install the Composer package manager, as it is required for Laravel.

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Once you have all the prerequisites in place, you can move on to the next step.

Step 1 – Install LAMP

The latest version of Laravel required PHP 8.0 or a newer version. To start with Laravel, we first need to set up a running LAMP server. If you have already run the LAMP stack skip this step else use the following commands to set up the lamp on the Ubuntu system.

Install PHP

sudo apt install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y php8.0 php8.0-mcrypt php8.0-gd php8.0-mbstring php8.0-xml

Install Apache2

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php8.0

Install MySQL

sudo apt-get install mysql-server php8.0-mysql

Step 2 – Install PHP Composer

The composer is required for installing Laravel dependencies. So use the below commands to download and use as a command in our system.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer

Step 3 – Create Laravel Application

Now that you have PHP and Composer installed on the server, you can move on to installing Laravel. To do this, you will need to open the terminal and run the following command:

cd /var/www
composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel my-laravel-app

This will create a new Laravel project in the directory specified by `my-laravel-app`. After that, you will need to open the project directory and run the following command to install all the dependencies:

cd /var/www/my-laravel-app
sudo composer install

Once the dependencies are installed, you can move on to the next step.

The dependencies installation may take some time as per your network speed. After successfully installing all dependencies, set the proper permissions on all files.

chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/my-laravel-app
chmod -R 755 /var/www/my-laravel-app
chmod -R 777 /var/www/my-laravel-app/storage

Now generate base64 random number encryption key, which is used by the Illuminate encrypter service.

php artisan key:generate

Application key set successfully.

Edit the .env configuration file and update the required settings. Also, make sure APP_KEY is properly set as generated in the above command.

Step 4 – Create Database for Laravel

You may also require creating a database for your Laravel application. Login to your MySQL server and create MySQL database and user.

Now edit the .env file and update database settings.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=laravel
DB_PASSWORD=secret

Step 5 – Apache Configuration

Edit Apache default virtual host configuration file 000-default.conf and update DocumentRoot to Laravel public directory as below:

vim /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

also add some more configuration.

<VirtualHost *:80>

        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www/my-laravel-app/public

        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/my-laravel-app>
                AllowOverride All
        </Directory>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Reload Apache configuration changes by restarting the service using the below command

sudo service apache2 restart

Step 6 – Access Laravel Application

You have successfully configured the Laravel 7 PHP framework on your system. Access the Laravel application in your favorite web browser

Let’s start building an awesome application using Laravel PHP Framework. Thanks.

Conclusion

Now that you have set up Laravel on Ubuntu & Debian, you can start developing your web application. Setting up Laravel is fairly straightforward, and this article should have given you a good idea of how to do it. It is important to note that you should always keep your server and software up to date in order to ensure optimal performance and security. If you have any questions or need help setting up Laravel, we are here to help.