Laravel Installation: The easiest way

First time installing Laravel on Windows seems difficult for someone like me. That’s why, I’m writing step by step procedure on how to install laravel on Windows.

•  Step-01: Download Composer

  At first, we need to setup the composer. For this, Go to composer’s website and download the Composer-setup.exe file from the Windows installer Section.

•  Step-02: Install Composer

  Install the composer into your computer. When installing composer, Remember the following:
  — Select “Do not install Shell Menus”
  — Locate the PATH of php.exe , if you’re using XAMP that is installed into your C drive, then the Path is similar to like this: C:\xampp\php\php.exe
  
  If the composer installation is done properly, then open the command prompt (Go to Run->cmd), write : composer
  If Everything is Okay, then you’ll see this:

  

  If the “composer” command didn’t work yet, then just find and check the file composer.bat and if anything is not written in this file, then write within the composer.bat file:

  @ECHO OFF
  php “%~dp0composer.phar” %*

•  Step-03: Install Laravel with Composer

  Now, it’s time to install Laravel on your Computer via Composer. Now you can install Laravel by issuing the following command from your terminal:
  

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

  This command will download and install a fresh copy of Laravel in a new your-project-name folder within your current directory.

  If you prefer, you can alternatively download a copy of the Laravel repository from GitHub manually. Next run the composer install command in the root of your manually created project directory. This command will download and install the framework’s dependencies.

•  Step-04: Serving Laravel

  Typically, you may use a web server such as Apache or Nginx to serve your Laravel applications. If you are on PHP 5.4+ and would like to use PHP’s built-in development server, you may use the serve Artisan command:

  php artisan serve

  ** N.B: For running this command, you’ve to set the PATH of php.exe to the Environment variable value. For instruction, go to Step- 07.

  Now, if you want to dig more and want to install Laravel via Laravel installer ( I prefer to use Laravel with Laravel installer)

• Step-05: Install Laravel globally on Windows via laravel installer

  If you already checked laravel.com website, then you saw that in the quick installation section, you’ll get this instruction (via laravel installer):

  First, download the Laravel installer using Composer.

  composer global require "laravel/installer=~1.1"

  Make sure to place the ~/.composer/vendor/bin directory in your PATH so the laravel executable is found when you run the laravel command in your terminal.

  In Windows, you’ve to Find out where you installed the composer,  “ComposerSetup\bin” folder. In my case, it is:  C:\Users\LAB5\AppData\Roaming\Composer\vendor\bin

  Now, Set the PATH to the Environment variable value. If you don’t know how to set PATH to the Environment Variable, then go to Step-07.

•  Step-06: Download Laravel via Laravel Installer

  Now, just write the command anywhere and your laravel framework will be downloaded into the specific folder.

  laravel new testLaravel

•  Step-07: Set the PATH to Environment Variable

   

  Right-click on computer and Select Properties
Go to: Advanced System settings->Environment variable->Select Path->Edit

  Then append the path of the composer.phar to the environment variable.
  Note that, DO NOT Use <space> or quotation within the value of Environment variable. Also separate paths with ‘;’ (omit the quotation here).