Simple Laravel Project

Follow this tutorial to start a new simple project with a custom route, a controller and a blade template. i wrote this tutorial because i am a beginner and this will help me get started in understanding laravel. these are the requirements:

1. in this examle, i will be using laravel version 5.3 which is the latest version today.
2. you must have php already installed, you will need php version 5.6.24 or higher. i recommend, version 7, but i will be using version 5.6.24 in this tutorial
3. you must have composer already installed

if you have all three requirements, lets continue. for this tutorial, i want to create an about page, its nothing fancy, just a simple basic html. the goal is to show the about page using this url: http://localhost:8000/about

1. Create Project Command

open your command and cd to the folder where you want to create your project. In my example, i have a XAMPP server running on my PC. and my project are located in this folder: C:\apachefriends\xampp\htdocs\opensource\laravel\tutorial\ so this is the command i would use:done
create-project laravel/laravel NewProject

2. cd to NewProject Folder

cd C:\apachefriends\xampp\htdocs\opensource\laravel\tutorial\NewProject

3. Start Server

Use this command to start the new server using artisan
php artisan serve

4. Confirm Server Running

open in browser: http://localhost:8000 - you should see the default laravel page. [advanced] You can also view the page is you are running XAMPP http://localhost/opensource/laravel/tutorial/NewProject/public/

5. Open Another Terminal

Now that you have the server running, open a second terminal.
cd C:\apachefriends\xampp\htdocs\opensource\laravel\tutorial\NewProject

6. Create Controller

create a controller with command.
php artisan make:controller pagesController

7. Open Project

I am using sublime, so i will now open the folder as a project in sublime, if you are not using sublime, you can skip this step

8. Create about Page

create a new pages folder in resources/views/pages/ or you can also create with command:
mkdir resources/views/pages

9. Create Controller

create a new about page in the pages folder, you can also use a command to create a new file:
LINUX OR MAC
touch resources/views/pages/about.blade.php

WINDOWS
copy NUL > resources/views/pages/about.blade.php

NOTE: if you are using windows, you might get an error, its ok if you do, the system will create the file, this is the error i got:
Copy-Item : Cannot find path 'C:\apachefriends\xampp\htdocs\opensource\laravel\tutorial\NewProject\NUL' because it does
not exist.
At line:1 char:5
+ copy <<<< NUL > resources/views/pages/about.blade.php
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (C:\apachefriend...\NewProject\NUL:String) [Copy-Item], ItemNotFoundExce
ption
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PathNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.CopyItemCommand

11. Open about.blade.php

open resources/views/pages/about.blade.php to add the HTML in our blade template file.
<h1>About Page</h1><hr>This is about.blade.php file

12. Open pagesController.php

open app/Http/Controllers/pagesController.php, add the following function and save
public function about(){

return view('pages.about');
}

13. Create Route

now lets add the routes so when we open the url /about it will display the contents from about.blade.php.

10. Open web.php

open the file called web.php, add the following code and save.
Route::get('about', 'pagesController@about');

these are another alternative ways you can write the code for a route:
Route Example 2
Route::get('users/create', ['uses' => 'exampleController@create']);


14. See In Browser

open the about page in browser: http://localhost:8000/about
You should see the content your put in about.blade.php from step 11

The End