DEV Community

medilies
medilies

Posted on • Updated on

Run Laravel locally on Ubuntu using Apache virtual host

#laravel #apache #ubuntu #php

Refresh APT metadata.

sudo apt update
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Installing MySQL

Install MySQL:

sudo apt install mysql-server
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Enter MySQL to edit the root user password:

sudo mysql
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Re-enter MySQL to create a database for our app, but using the credentials this time:

mysql -u root -p
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
CREATE DATABASE my_app;
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

References:

Installing Apache

Ubuntu usually comes bundled with a running Apache server but still, I'll include the installation steps.

sudo apt-get install apache2 -y
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Check if Apache is installed by verifying its version:

apache2ctl -v
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Check if your firewall is active:

sudo ufw status
sudo ufw app list
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If it returned Status: active then allow HTTP traffic on Apache:

sudo ufw allow in "Apache"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now, visiting http://localhost should display "Apache2 Default Page".

References:

Installing PHP

Register the following repo that enables the installation of multiple PHP versions at once.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Install PHP 8.1.

sudo apt install php8.1
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If you opt for a different version then just replace 8.1 with your version whenever you copy a command.

Add PHP module to Apache server:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php8.1
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Install the extensions required by Laravel:

sudo apt install php8.1-mbstring php8.1-xmlrpc php8.1-soap php8.1-gd php8.1-xml php8.1-cli php8.1-zip php8.1-bcmath php8.1-tokenizer php8.1-json php8.1-pear
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The newly installed extensions will be automatically enabled with their configs placed at /etc/php/8.1/cli/conf.d/.

References:

Installing composer

Check https://getcomposer.org/download/.

A new Laravel app 

cd
mkdir dev
cd dev
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

I like to place my code at ~/dev.

Create a new Laravel app:

composer global require laravel/installer
laravel new my_app --git
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Set the correct permissions to enable Apache to execute your PHP code.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /home/me/dev/my_app
sudo chmod -R 777 /home/me/dev/my_app
sudo chmod o+x /home/me
sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev
sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev/
sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev/my_app
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Set .env with your app and database details.

Faking a domain name

We will add a domain name for our app that only our machine knows about by editing /etc/hosts. We will configure it to let our machine know that the domain name my_app.local is on the loopback IP address 127.0.0.1.

sudo nano /etc/hosts
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
# Add this line anywhere
127.0.0.1 my_app.local
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Test that you configured the domain correctly by pinging it:

ping my_app.local
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Note that using internet top-level domains like .com will most likely not work. So I recommend sticking to .local for testing locally without HTTPS and without a registered domain name.

Setting up the virtual host

Now we move to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and use as our base virtual host config file:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
sudo cp 000-default.conf my_app-local.conf
sudo nano my_app-local.conf
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

And edit my_app-local.conf to look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
        # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
        # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
        # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
        # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
        # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
        # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
        ServerName my_app.local   
        ServerAlias www.my_app.local

        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /home/me/dev/my_app/public

        <Directory /home/me/dev/my_app/public>
                Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Require all granted
        </Directory>

        ReWriteEngine On

        # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
        # error, crit, alert, emerg.
        # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
        # modules, e.g.
        #LogLevel info ssl:warn

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

        # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
        # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
        # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
        # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
        # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
        #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Check the validity of the config you added:

sudo apache2ctl configtest
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Enable your new site:

sudo a2ensite my_app-local.conf
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Also, enable the rewrite module to be able to have URLs that do not point only to real files:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The final thing to do is restart Apache to reload the new config:

sudo systemctl restart apache2
// or
sudo systemctl reload apache2
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

References:

Finally

Visit http://my_app.local.

Top comments (4)

Collapse
 
medilies profile image
medilies • • Edited

You might want to edit the user and group of the Apache service at /etc/apache2/apache2.conf instead of changing the permissions and ownership of the files.

# These need to be set in /etc/apache2/envvars
User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Collapse
 
medilies profile image
medilies •

For dev purposes:

  • If you want to connect to MySQL from any machine do sudo nano /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf and set bind-address = 0.0.0.0.

Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.

Read next

invezza profile image

Database Management In WordPress: 9 Tips For Efficient Data Handling

Invezza -

abdul_sattar profile image

Install Notion on Ubuntu

ABDUL SATTAR -

emanuelnav profile image

Integrate Snowflake with Laravel

Emanuel Navarro -

chemisax profile image

¿Cómo guarda Laravel la cookie de sesión y csrf?

chemisax -