Laravel Xampp Setup (Windows & Mac)

Install Xampp

Install Xampp from https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

• Run the Xampp installer and open the Xampp control panel
• Make sure that you enable the Apache and MySQL services
• On mac you need to click "Start" on the Home tab, "Enable" on the Network tab and "Mount" on the Location Tab. Click "Explore" on the location tab to open your Xampp/Lampp folder

Install Composer

Go to https://getcomposer.org/download

• On Windows, download and run the installer
• On Mac, copy the php commands and run in the terminal. Then copy the mv command and run in terminal. You can also install composer with Homebrew

Create a New Laravel Project With Composer

Open a terminal in the htdocs folder. htdocs is where all of your local projects go.

htdocs folder location:

• Windows - C:\Xampp\htdocs
• Mac - /opt/lampp/htdocs

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

Virtual Host Setup

We now need to create a virtual host for our project

Edit Hosts File

• Windows - C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts
• Mac - /etc/hosts

Add these lines

127.0.0.1	localhost
127.0.0.1	PROJECT_NAME.test

Edit Virtual Hosts File

• Windows - C:/xampp/apache/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
    ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/PROJECT_NAME/public"
    ServerName PROJECT_NAME.test
 </VirtualHost>

• Mac - /opt/lampp/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /opt/lampp/htdocs
    ServerName localhost
    ServerAlias www.localhost
</VirtualHost>


<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /opt/lampp/htdocs/PROJECT_NAME/public
    ServerName PROJECT_NAME.test
    ServerAlias www.PROJECT_NAME.test
</VirtualHost>

Restart Apache with the Xampp panel

Now visit http://laravel.test ot htttp://laravel.test:8080 on Mac

If it does not work, make sure virtual hosts file is enabled in httpd.conf

• Windows - C:/xampp/apache/conf/httpd.conf
• Mac - /opt/lampp/etc/httpd.conf

Remove the # from the beginning of this line

#Include etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Save the file

Directory Setup

go to bottom of httpd.conf file and add these following code

Alias /alias_name "directory_path"
<Directory "directory_path">
Options FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Require all granted
</Directory>

then open browser in this address

localhost:port/alias_name/public