How to Deploy a Laravel Application?

This guide aims to navigate you through the process of deploying a Laravel application using a serverless environment in a series of straightforward and comprehensive steps. We will explore Laravel’s fundamental features, discuss the advantages of Back4app, and demonstrate the integration benefits of this duo.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is an open-source PHP platform designed for crafting web applications, following the principles of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture.

Introduced by Taylor Otwell in 2011, Laravel has won the hearts of developers with its expressive and sleek syntax, which makes diverse web development tasks, including routing, sessions, caching, and authentication, more efficient and enjoyable. 

Laravel provides a broad spectrum of tools and features, enabling developers to build a range of projects, from simple ones to intricate applications.

Among its noteworthy features are an intuitive ORM for effective database handling, the built-in Artisan command-line utility, database migration capabilities, safeguards against major web security risks, the user-friendly Blade templating system, integrated testing tools, and task scheduling functions.

Advantages of using Laravel

The Laravel PHP framework brings a plethora of benefits to web application development, making it a preferred choice among many developers:

1. Eloquent ORM

Laravel boasts an eloquent Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) feature, offering a simple and efficient way to interact with databases using PHP, eliminating the need for SQL queries. This enhances data accessibility and manipulation.

2. MVC Architecture

Laravel’s adherence to the Model-View-Controller pattern provides a clear distinction between logic and presentation, contributing to a more organized, maintainable codebase and optimized application performance.

3. Security Measures

Laravel provides comprehensive security mechanisms, safeguarding applications from threats like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and cross-site request forgery. Additionally, it incorporates encryption and hashing for secure password storage.

4. Blade Templating

Laravel’s Blade templating system allows developers to use plain PHP code, offering simplicity and flexibility. Blade also provides convenient shortcuts for common functions and structures, saving valuable development time.

5. Artisan Tool

Laravel’s Artisan command-line interface automates mundane tasks, allowing developers to focus on application development. It can create database structures and generate boilerplate code for controllers, models, and more.

6. Database Migration

Laravel’s database migration system allows alterations to the database structure without the need for recreation each time, making version control of your database schema more manageable.

7. Modularity

Laravel is constructed on over 20 separate libraries and is segmented into individual modules. This promotes the creation of modular, responsive, and user-friendly web applications.

8. Testing Support

Laravel provides built-in support for unit testing. Additionally, it can mimic basic user interactions, such as form inputs, file uploads, or even JavaScript clicks.

9. Routing System

Laravel offers a straightforward and adaptable route definition approach, enabling developers to precisely control the behavior of each URL in an application.

10. Task Scheduling

Laravel’s task scheduler simplifies the periodic execution of various tasks within the application, such as email dispatch or database cleanup.

Limitations of using Laravel

Despite Laravel’s extensive capabilities and versatility as a PHP framework, it does come with a handful of drawbacks:

1. Performance Issues

Due to the richness of its functionalities and features, Laravel can sometimes underperform when compared to lighter PHP frameworks. This might pose challenges for applications that demand real-time data processing or intensive computations.

2. Difficulty in Learning

Laravel’s sophisticated syntax, while elegant, can be a steep learning curve for beginners. This is especially true if they don’t have a strong foundation in PHP and Object-Oriented Programming principles.

3. Integration with Legacy Systems

Incorporating legacy systems not built on the MVC pattern with a Laravel application could be a complex and lengthy process.

4. Application Size

Laravel’s comprehensive set of features and its “heavier” nature might not be ideal for small-scale or microservices-oriented applications, where lightweight frameworks or bare PHP might be a more suitable choice.

5. Long-Term Support Concerns

Some developers have voiced concerns about the longevity of support for older Laravel versions. While Laravel is consistently updated and maintained, support for older versions tends to be short-lived.

6. Potential Extension Compatibility Issues

Although Laravel boasts numerous in-built functionalities, certain PHP extensions might face compatibility problems. This largely depends on the hosting environment and may necessitate additional configurations or adaptations.

What are Back4app Containers?

Back4app Containers are responsible for deploying a wide range of applications using their resources. They take the Dockerfile and deploy the project on their remote servers.

This technique saves the resources of the users. Moreover, users can track the progress and resource utilization status of their deployed applications. Back4app containers also support the re-deployment of the application after new git commits.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Deploy a Laravel Application on Back4app   

Let’s look into how we can create a Laravel Application from scratch, what prerequisites we need, and finally deploy that application on the Back4app platform.

1. Login into the Back4app Platform

Do login into your account on Back4app.

Select the relevant option and click on it. In this case, we selected “Continue with Google.”

After logging in, you can see all of your Back4app applications under the “My Apps” section.

Before creating an app in the Back4app, we first need to develop the Laravel application on our local device and then publish it to GitHub. So let’s first do the required implementations.

2. Download and Installation of Prerequisites

To create a Laravel project, there are some prerequisites that we have to install on our device.

• Download and Install PHP

First, we need to download the PHP programming language from their official site.

Click on the “Windows downloads” option.

Select the “Thread Safe” category and download the zip version of PHP.

After downloading, extract the zip version of PHP.

Copy the extracted folder of PHP and paste it into the C://drive “Program Files” folder.

Now copy the path of the PHP folder from Program Files.

Open the Environment Variables from the Windows search bar.

Open the “Path” option in the “System Variables” section.

Paste the copied path of PHP here and press “OK.”

Verify the installation of PHP by executing the following command in the Command Line. The PHP version shows that it has been successfully installed on our local machine.

• Download and Install Composer

Now download the “composer, ” a dependency management tool for Laravel, from their website.

Click on the “Download” button.

Click on the “Composer-Setup.exe” link. It will start the download.

Double-click on the downloaded .exe file.

The following Popup will open. Now click on the ”Next” button.

Select the path where PHP has been installed on your device and press “Next.”

Click on the “Install” button to finally install the Composer tool on your machine.

The installation has been completed, so click the “Finish” button to close the popup.

To verify that the “composer” has been successfully installed on your machine, go to the CMD and run the command ‘composer’’. The below screenshot represents that it has been installed successfully.

3. Update Configuration Settings for Laravel

Before continuing, we have to configure some settings by uncommenting 2 lines of code in the “php.ini” file. Go to the PHP folder present in “Program Files” and open the php.ini file in the editor.

Uncomment the “extension=fileinfo” line by removing the semicolon at the start of the line.

Uncomment the “extension=zip” line by removing the semicolon at the start of the line.

4. Creating a Project using Laravel Framework

First, open the Visual Studio Code using the Windows search bar. 

Now the Visual Studio Code IDE has been successfully launched.

Click on the “Terminal” option showing at the top bar and open it.

The new terminal has been launched in the below section.

Now install the Laravel Installer using the following command.

Now create a new folder in your local drive and assign it a name. Here we have given it the name “laravel1”.

Open the ‘laravel1’ folder in the Visual Studio Code.

The ‘laravel1’ folder has been successfully opened in the visual studio code.

Run the following command to create a new Laravel project in the ‘laravel1’ directory having the name “my_project”.

A Laravel project has been created.

 Move the position of your directory to your Laravel project.

Finally, run the “php artisan serve” command to launch the Laravel project.

Go to your browser and hit the URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000, by which the Laravel application will be launched.

5. Dockerize the Laravel Project

Create a new ‘Dockerfile’ in the Laravel Project.

Open this file and write the following commands in it.

Run the command shown in the screenshot below to build the Docker image of your project.

Run the ‘docker run’ command to execute the Docker image inside the Docker container.

Go to the Docker Desktop dashboard and find the image of ‘my_project’. Click on the port link to verify that the application has been dockerized successfully.

On clicking the port, the browser will load the Laravel project successfully. It indicates that dockerization has been completed.

6. Create a Git Repo and Push the Laravel Project

Click on the ‘Sign In’ option on the GitHub website.

Give your credentials to log in.

Create a new repository by clicking on the ‘New’ button.

Name the repository ‘laravel’.

Press the ‘Create repository’ button to initialize the repo.

A repository has been created in GitHub.

Go to the Laravel project’s Terminal and start with initializing git.

Add ‘my_project’ in git.

Commit your code.

Set the branch, remote origin, and finally push the repository to GitHub.

The Laravel project repository has been pushed.

7. Create a New App in Back4app Containers by Integrating with Laravel Project

As you have already logged in to the Back4app platform, click the “NEW APP” button.

Choose the Back4app containers service.

After choosing a service, a dashboard will appear that will highlight all the projects done before. 

Press the ‘Edit Github Permissions’ option to import the GitHub repository of the Laravel project into the Back4app.

Select the ‘laravel’ repository and click the ‘Save’ button.

The GitHub repository has been imported into the Back4app platform.

Now select this project to create an app.

Provide the ‘App Name’, and the branch will auto-select as ‘main’ and provide the name of the root directory where the Dockerfile exists.

In the end, press the ‘Create App’ button to create a Docker containerized app in the Back4app.

The application started deploying and installing the required dependencies for the Laravel project. 

In Back4app, we can check each time an application is deployed and the critical logs of the application during deployment. 

Finally, the application has been successfully built and deployed and is now available to use. Click on the green link and view your application.

The Laravel application has been successfully executed on the Back4app containers.

Conclusion

Utilizing Back4app containers for the deployment of Laravel applications greatly simplifies the development workflow and promises a dependable, scalable deployment method.

Back4app’s efficient containers service allows developers to manage and launch their Laravel applications effortlessly while ensuring adequate resource allocation to cater to varying demands. 

The deployment process encompasses steps like the creation of a new Back4app application, environment variables configuration, Laravel project setup, and finally, application deployment.

While the initial setup may require some effort, the scale-up capabilities, versatility, and user-friendliness of Back4app validate its suitability for Laravel application deployment.

This platform frees developers to concentrate on creating outstanding web applications, reducing concerns over deployment intricacies.

FAQ