Install Laravel with Composer: Ultimate Cross-Platform Guide

Installing Laravel correctly is crucial for leveraging its capabilities effectively. Composer, a PHP dependency manager, simplifies this process by handling Laravel’s dependencies and ensuring compatibility.

In this blog, we’ll discuss how to install Laravel using Composer on Windows, macOS, and Linux. We’ll also cover the benefits of using Composer for Laravel installation and the prerequisites you must have. Plus, we’ll have a look at the best practices followed by Laravel developers.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a popular, open-source PHP framework designed to simplify the web development process. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, which separates the logic of an application into three interconnected components: the Model, View, and Controller.

Key Features of Laravel

• Elegant Syntax: Laravel is known for its clean, readable, and expressive syntax, which helps developers write less code and achieve more. It simplifies complex tasks like routing, caching, sessions, and authentication.
• MVC Architecture: It follows an MVC pattern that promotes a clean separation of concerns, making it easier to maintain and scale websites. This structure enhances code organization and reusability.
• Blade Templating Engine: Using Laravel Blade templates allows developers to write clean and reusable templates with ease. Blade templates are compiled into plain PHP code and cached until they are modified.
• Eloquent ORM: Eloquent is Laravel’s built-in Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) system. It provides a simple and straightforward way to interact with databases. With Eloquent techniques, developers can perform database queries using PHP syntax without writing raw SQL.
• Routing: Laravel’s routing system is flexible and simple, enabling developers to define routes for their websites easily. It supports RESTful routes, named routes, and route groups.
• Middleware: Laravel uses middleware to filter HTTP requests entering your application. Middleware in Laravel offers a convenient way to handle tasks like authentication, logging, and Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) middleware.
• Artisan Command-Line Tool: Artisan is Laravel’s command-line interface (CLI) that provides various helpful commands to streamline common tasks. It lets you manage Laravel migrations, seeding databases, and running unit tests.
• Security: Laravel includes several security features out of the box, such as protection against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and SQL injection. It also provides a robust authentication system.
• Modular Packaging System: It has a rich ecosystem of various packages and PHP libraries that can be easily integrated into your application via Composer. These packages extend the framework’s functionality.

By leveraging these features, Laravel development experts can build robust, scalable, and maintainable websites efficiently.

What is Composer?

Composer is a dependency management tool for PHP that allows you to manage the libraries and packages on which your Laravel project depends. It simplifies the process of adding, updating, and managing external libraries so that your project has the correct versions of these dependencies.

Benefits of Using Composer to Install Laravel

Using Composer to install Laravel is an easy and recommended approach because of its numerous benefits. Here’s why you should use Composer to install Laravel:

• Automated Dependency Handling: Laravel relies on various third-party libraries and packages to function. Composer automatically manages these dependencies, ensuring that all required libraries are installed and correctly configured. This eliminates the need to manually download and manage individual packages.
• Simplified Installation: With Composer, installing Laravel is as simple as running a single command. Composer handles the download of the Laravel framework, along with all its dependencies, and sets up the project structure for you.
• Effortless Updates: Composer makes it easy to keep Laravel and its dependencies up to date. By running the composer update command, you can update Laravel to the latest version. Keeping Laravel updated ensures that your project benefits from the latest features and security patches.
• Controlled Environment: It allows you to specify the exact version of Laravel you want to install. This ensures consistency across different environments (development, staging, production) and among developers working on the same project.
• Stability: You can lock dependencies to specific versions via the composer.lock file. This allows you to ensure that your project remains stable, even when newer versions of packages are released.
• Automatic Class Loading: It generates an autoload file that automatically loads the necessary classes and files in your Laravel project. This feature simplifies the development process by reducing the need to require files manually.

These benefits clearly indicate why professional Laravel developers prefer to install Laravel via Composer. Now, you might want to learn the same, right? We’ll dive into it, but before that, let’s have a sneak peek at the prerequisites to install Laravel using Composer.

Prerequisites to Install Laravel Via Composer

To install Laravel using Composer on different operating systems, there are specific prerequisites for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Below are the detailed prerequisites for each platform:

Prerequisites For Windows

PHP Version: Laravel requires PHP 8.1 or higher. You can install PHP by downloading it from the official PHP website.

Download and Install Composer: Download Composer from the official Composer website and run the installer. To verify that installation is completed, open the Command Prompt and run:

composer -v

Web Server: Install a local web server like XAMPP or WAMP, which comes with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. If you want to use Laravel’s built-in server, you can run the command:

php artisan serve.

Prerequisites For macOS

PHP Installation: macOS often comes with PHP pre-installed. However, you may need to upgrade to a version that meets Laravel’s requirements using Homebrew:

brew install php

To verify the installation, open the terminal and run the following:

php -v

php -m

Composer Installation: You can install Composer globally using the following command in terminal:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

To verify Composer is installed, run the command:

composer -v

Web Server: macOS includes a built-in Apache server. To start using it, you can run the command:

sudo apachectl start

Alternatively, you can install MAMP, which includes Apache, PHP, and MySQL.

Prerequisites For Linux

PHP Installation: Depending on your Linux distribution, install PHP 8.1 or higher. For example, on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install php php-cli php-mbstring php-xml php-pdo php-json php-tokenizer php-bcmath

To verify the installation, open the terminal and run the following:

php -v

php -m

Composer Installation: Use the following commands to install Composer globally:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

To verify Composer is installed on your Linux OS, run the command:

composer -v

Web Server: You can install Apache or Nginx to configure a web server.

• For installing Apache, run the command: sudo apt-get install apache2
• For installing Nginx, the command: sudo apt-get install nginx

Additional Considerations

• Text Editor or IDE: Choose a suitable code editor for Laravel development (e.g., Visual Studio Code, PhpStorm, Sublime Text).
• Database: While not strictly required for initial setup, a database like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite is often used for Laravel applications.

By fulfilling these prerequisites, you’ll be ready to install Laravel via Composer.

How to Install Laravel Using Composer?

Once you have installed and configured the prerequisites for Laravel installation, you can start with the installation process. There might be some difference in the installation process for different operating systems (OS). We’ll install Laravel using Composer into three commonly used OS: Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Here is a how you can do:

For Windows

Step 1: Open the command prompt and navigate to the directory where you want to create your Laravel project:

cd path\to\your-directory

Step 2: Run the following command to create a new Laravel project:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel project-name

Step 3: Once the installation is completed, go to the newly created project directory:

cd project-name

Step 4: To start the built-in development server to verify your Laravel installation, run the command:

php artisan serve

Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:8000 to see the Laravel welcome page. With this, we have successfully installed Laravel using Composer in Windows.

For macOS

Step 1: Navigate to the directory where you want to create the Laravel project:

cd /path/to/your-directory

Step 2: To create a new new Laravel project, run the command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel project-name

Step 3: Now, go to the newly created project directory:

cd project-name

Step 4: To start the Laravel’s built-in server, you can run the command:

php artisan serve

Once done, visit http://localhost:8000 in your browser to check if the Laravel installation is completed or not. If it’s successful, you will see a welcome page.

For Linux

Step 1: Navigate to the directory where you want to create your Laravel project:

cd /path/to/your-directory

Step 2: Run the following command to create a new Laravel project:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel project-name

Step 3: Navigate to your project directory where you created the new project; here is how:

cd project-name

Step 4: Start the development server by running:

php artisan serve

After finishing, open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8000; if you see the Laravel welcome page, your installation is completed.

By following the steps specific to your operating system, you can successfully install Laravel using Composer. This will allow you to begin developing powerful web applications with Laravel’s extensive feature set. To leverage the complete power of Laravel for building websites, consider hiring Laravel developers.

Best Practices for Managing Laravel Projects with Composer

Composer is a cornerstone of Laravel development, offering efficient dependency management and streamlined package installation. Here are some best practices to optimize your Laravel projects with Composer:

• Clear and concise composer.json: Maintain a well-structured composer.json file, accurately reflecting project dependencies.
• Leverage version constraints: Use appropriate version constraints (^, ~, = operators) to manage dependency versions effectively.
• Separate development and production dependencies: Use the –dev flag when installing packages required only for development (e.g., testing frameworks, code linters).
• Regularly update dependencies: Keep your project up-to-date by regularly running composer update. Be cautious of breaking changes.
• Consider using a lock file: Enable the lock file (composer install –no-dev) to ensure consistent dependency installations across environments.
• Optimize autoloading: Configure Composer’s autoloader efficiently to reduce performance overhead.
• Use version control: Employ Git version control systems to track changes and collaborate efficiently.
• Clear Cache Regularly: If you encounter issues with outdated packages or corrupted files, clear Composer’s cache using:

By following these best practices, you can manage Laravel projects to ensure a stable, secure, and efficient development environment.

FAQs About Installing Laravel Using Composer

Conclusion

Installing Laravel using Composer is a simple and straightforward process. Composer streamlines the process by managing dependencies to ensure you have the right versions of libraries. That makes it a valuable tool for Laravel development.

Every OS has a slight change in the installation process. By fulfilling the required prerequisites, you can begin to install and create websites using Laravel. But if you want to create a highly customized and robust site, hire Laravel developers.