Setup Laravel

Setup Laravel

This example installs a current Laravel 11 or 12 application inside the Devilbox PHP container and serves public/ through the standard Devilbox htdocs document root.

Overview

Project name	Container path	Database	TLD_SUFFIX	Project URL
my-laravel	/shared/httpd/my-laravel	my_laravel	lvh.me	http://my-laravel.lvh.me / https://my-laravel.lvh.me

Inside the container, projects are in /shared/httpd/; on the host, they are under ./data/www/.

Prerequisites

• Devilbox with PHP 8.3 or PHP 8.4 available from env-example.
• Composer available in the PHP container.
• HTTPD, MySQL, and Bind services.

Start the stack:

./dvl.sh up php httpd mysql bind

Tip

If you created a global dvl symlink with install.sh, the examples work with dvl shell and dvl exec as well. The local ./dvl.sh form is shown for clarity.

Walk through

It will be ready in eight steps:

1. Enter the PHP container.
2. Create a new virtual host directory.
3. Install Laravel.
4. Link public/ to htdocs.
5. Add a MySQL database.
6. Configure .env.
7. Verify DNS.
8. Open the project.

1. Enter the PHP container

./dvl.sh shell php83

2. Create the vhost directory

mkdir -p /shared/httpd/my-laravel
cd /shared/httpd/my-laravel

3. Install Laravel

For Laravel 11:

composer create-project laravel/laravel:^11.0 laravel-project

For Laravel 12 on a compatible PHP runtime:

composer create-project laravel/laravel:^12.0 laravel-project

Expected structure:

tree -L 1
.
└── laravel-project

4. Link the webroot

ln -s laravel-project/public htdocs

5. Add the MySQL database

mysql -u root -h 127.0.0.1 -p -e 'CREATE DATABASE my_laravel CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;'

6. Configure Laravel

Edit laravel-project/.env:

APP_URL=http://my-laravel.lvh.me
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=my_laravel
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=

Then generate the application key if Composer did not already do it:

cd laravel-project
php artisan key:generate

7. Verify DNS

my-laravel.lvh.me resolves to 127.0.0.1. Add a hosts-file record only for custom suffixes.

8. Open your browser

Visit http://my-laravel.lvh.me or https://my-laravel.lvh.me.

Next steps

• Run Artisan commands with ./dvl.sh exec "php artisan" from the Laravel project directory.
• Use Adminer or phpMyAdmin from the Devilbox intranet to inspect my_laravel.
• Add Redis, queues, or mail services only when your app needs them.