Getting Started with Laravel on Ubuntu

November 30, 2016 | programming | php | ubuntu |

I’ve really been digging Laravel lately. Especially due to the wonderful documentation and amazing resources provided by Laracasts. Below are some notes on getting going on a local Ubuntu install. I am running Ubuntu 16.10 and these notes assume a fresh install.

Install PHP 7.0 and additional dependencies

sudo apt install php7.0 php7.0-zip php7.0-mbstring phpunit

Install Composer (Globally)

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

Install the Laravel CLI (Globally)

composer global require "laravel/installer"

Add globally installed composer commands to the PATH

Add the following to the end of your ~/.bashrc file

# Add Composer to the PATH
export PATH=$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin:$PATH

You can either source the ~/.bashrc file or open a new terminal window.

Verify everything works

You can do this by running laravel new test_project. Then go to the directory where the new test_project is created with cd test_project. Once you are in the new project directory install all local dependencies with composer install and then run it with php artisan serve. I ran into an issue right away that had to do with the APP_KEY. The error manifested itself as:

The only supported ciphers are AES-128-CBC and AES-256-CBC with the correct key lengths.

A great explanation is shown here but the steps to get a fully functional base install going are:

# Copy the .env.example file to .env cp .env.example .env

Generate App Key

php artisan key:generate

Now if you run php artisan serve you will see a fully running Laravel app. Happy Hacking!

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Getting Started with Laravel on Ubuntu

Install PHP 7.0 and additional dependencies

Install Composer (Globally)

Install the Laravel CLI (Globally)

Add globally installed composer commands to the PATH

Verify everything works

Generate App Key

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