How to install Laravel on windows computer

Laravel is the most popular PHP Framework out there. It makes web development so much easier than before it was. This framework is following model-view-controller architectural pattern and based on Symfony. The latest version of Laravel is 5.8 released on February 26th, 2019. In this post, we are going to see how to install Laravel on Windows Computer.

Before installing laravel on our computer we need few things listed below -

1. Server Requirements
2. Laravel Supported Database
3. Composer

Laravel has some requirements to fulfill, let have a look at it.

• PHP >= 7.1.3
• BCMath PHP Extension
• Ctype PHP Extension
• JSON PHP Extension
• Mbstring PHP Extension
• OpenSSL PHP Extension
• PDO PHP Extension
• Tokenizer PHP Extension
• XML PHP Extension

All of these requirements are satisfied by the Laravel Homestead virtual machine, so if you don't like a hassle you can go with Laravel Homestead.

But there are other ways to fulfill these requirements, you can install one by one and then install laravel.

We can fulfill these requirements using XAMPP which is the most popular PHP development environment. Basically, XAMPP is a cross-platform local web server solution created by Apache Friends. XAMPP comes with lots of modules and packages. Few of them are Apache, MySQL, FileZilla, Mercury & Tomcat. So in this case, XAMPP will fulfill Server Requirements and Database requirements.

You can download the latest version from here. - https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html

The installation process of this software is very easy like any other windows application. You can check the tutorial below for instruction.

The last thing we need is Laravel Dependency manager. Laravel utilizes Composer to manage its dependencies. Composer provides a standard format for managing dependencies of PHP and required libraries.

To download composer follow this link - https://getcomposer.org/Composer-Setup.exe

After downloading the composer, install it on your computer. To test composer is installed correctly or not run cmd and type "composer -v" and press enter.

composer -v

You will see something like this. If doesn't install composer again and restart the computer and try again.

Now we are ready to install laravel on computer. Go to the destination folder where you want to install and run cmd or git bash(if you have). Write the command and press enter and it will start gathering package data and install laravel.

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog"

There is another way to install laravel which is first we have to install laravel globally on our computer and then install on a particular folder

Laravel Global Installer -

composer global require laravel/installer

Create Project Using -

laravel new blog

blog(it's your project name you can write whatever your project is).

After completing the installation process go to your project folder and run this command "PHP artisan serve"

it will open a port and start the project on this port. browse the http://localhost:8000 on your browser.

http://localhost:8000