How to get started with Laravel

Laravel is an open-source php framework created to make building web applications easy with elegant syntax.  Building a laravel application requires a few adjustments to your setup. However, like any other framework, laravel has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let us discuss that first, so that you understand the capabilities of this framework.

Disadvantages

Upgrades and backward compatibility - Laravel releases significant version upgrades on a regular basis, which may include breaking changes. When upgrading to a new Laravel version, this may need changes to current codebases, which can be time-consuming and difficult.

Limited scalability for complex applications - While Laravel is suitable for creating small to medium-sized applications, it may experience scalability challenges when dealing with extremely high traffic or sophisticated enterprise-level systems. Further architectural considerations and performance optimization may be required in such circumstances.

Advantages

Robust ecosystem - Laravel has a huge and active developer community, which means there is a wealth of documentation, tutorials, and tools. Furthermore, with Composer, Laravel provides a robust ecosystem of third-party packages, allowing developers to effortlessly incorporate extra functionality into their projects.

Eloquent ORM - Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) from Laravel streamlines database interactions with an expressive and straightforward syntax. It enables developers to use simple code to construct database models and associations, avoiding the need for tedious SQL queries.

Rapid development - Laravel's accelerated development process includes a plethora of built-in functionality and libraries. It provides ready-to-use components including authentication, caching, routing, and session management, reducing development time.

MVC architecture - Laravel adheres to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural paradigm, which encourages separation of responsibilities and aids in the development of modular and manageable code. MVC increases code structure, allowing developers to cooperate and work on different sections of the program more easily.

Overall, Laravel provides a strong and feature-rich environment for PHP web development, allowing developers to work more efficiently and productively. However, it is critical to assess the unique objectives of your project and determine whether Laravel's benefits coincide with your needs.

When working with laravel, it is advised to install at least version 8x. The framework curently has version 4-10x, and it requires php version 7x. What todo when getting started? Well, depending on your enviroment whether its windows, mac, or linux there are requirements your system has to meet. You need to either install Dockeror Xampp. Afterwards you have to install Composer. Then you are all set, easy right? Now lets get to the part you have been waiting for.

To install laravel 8-10 on Xampp you have to open xampp then install and activate Mysql and Apache, then head to your terminal in administrator mode and navigate into the directory you installed xampp in, then open the folder written "htdocs". 

Then run the following command

composer create-project laravel/laravel 
example-app 

Then run the following command to navigate  into your application

cd example-app

Then run the following command to serve your application

php artisan serve

Congratulations, you should now see your project by inserting http://127.0.0.1:8000 in your web browser. Now, developers working on Docker should type the following code in Docker

curl -s "https://laravel.build/example-app" 
| bash

Then run the following command

cd example-app
 
./vendor/bin/sail up

Congratulations, you should now see your project by inserting http://127.0.0.1:8000 in your web browser. We thank you for reading till the end and we hope this tutorial will help you a great deal, and do not forget to visit the laravel documentation website, what is using a framework without reading its documentation right. And stay tuned, we will be posting more articles on laravel and building websites.