How to run any Laravel project (It's very easy)

You may be confused about how to run a Laravel project taken from outside sources such as Github, because in a Laravel project that is made directly on the local we only have to type in the command terminal

php artisan serve

and the Laravel project can run properly and can be displayed on the screen.

Let's see the difference between local and external Laravel projects, here I will use external sources such as Github.
As you can see, there are some files and folders missing in the Laravel project part taken from Github.

Why this happens is because Laravel by default has a special file called .gitignore, this file will exclude the files and folders listed in it so that they will not be uploaded to Github or other external sources that have Git support.
This is necessary for security reasons and also to minimize the size of the project so as not to overload the cloud storage with unnecessary files.

So how to run it if some files and folders are missing? I'll show you how.

Make sure your PHP version fulfills the minimum specifications of the Laravel project.

First of all, your php version must fulfill the minimum specifications of the Laravel project, for example if the Laravel version is 10 you need at least PHP version 8.1+ to run it.

You can check the minimum php specifications in Laravel via the following link laravel.com/docs/master/releases#support-policy

If your PHP version does not fulfill the minimum specifications and you do not know how to update or change the PHP version, you can read my previous post on How to switch or update PHP version in Laragon

Install the necessary packages for the Laravel project

composer install

The command is to install the packages needed in the Laravel project, you can see in the first picture in the local section there is a folder called vendor, that folder will be installed if you run the command above.

Create and configure the .env file

Because the .env file doesn't exist then you have to create it again, you can copy the file called .env.example to create the .env file quickly, just run the following command on the terminal

cp .env.example .env

the system will automatically copy the .env.example file and change the file name to .env.

Configure the application key in the .env file

In the .env file that you just created earlier does not have an application key, you must set the application key by running the following command

php artisan key:generate 

this will automatically regenerate the application key in your .env file.

Run some additional commands (optional)

If you are using a database in your Laravel project, then run the following command

php artisan migrate

Make sure you have configured the database in the .env file.

If the Laravel project has a file upload feature then don't forget to run the following command

php artisan storage:link

Closing

That's how to run any Laravel project, if you run it locally then you can directly type the php artisan serve command to run it.

Note: if you run on a server then you have to change the root folder to public and don't have to run the php artisan serve command anymore.

Hopefully this post is useful for you and don't forget to share it with others. good luck...