Eloquent | Codeonion Blog

This Laravel tutorial deals with the Installation, Setup and Basic Laravel MVC usage to open a page with intro to the CRUD operations.

Don’t know how to setup a new Laravel project or you are a 20 year old pro who is too pro to touch the basics? This is the right place to be. I’ll keep referencing this tutorial whenever Installation is needed in my other Laravel posts.

It is expected that you are familiar with the basics of windows and linux server administration. If you need more help then please use Google. But I will try to avoid the basics to make sure that the goals are achieved without any fuss.

Now I don’t joke around. As per the tradition of this blog, I will make sure that you achieve this goal with the least effort wasted on figuring out wtf is this blog talking about. Let me know in the comments if you find it helpful. So let’s get started!

The 12345 Steps 🙂 :

Setup of new project and running the server to make sure it bites.
Creating a Database (mysql)
Performing Migration to create schema
Controller to repeatedly insert and render a View
Test! and Conclusion

1. Setup and running new project

Lets learn how to install a new Laravel project with running a server on default port 8000.

Before we start, it is important that you should simply follow the official documentation for the latest Laravel Version installation guideline. I don’t want you to look backward when mentioning my blog.

Source: https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/installation

So create a folder in your drive and open the console in it like so:

Opening the Laravel root project folder in windows command prompt or terminal

Now, lets create a project by running the following command in console:

laravel new codeonion_tutorial

This creates a “codeonion_tutorial” folder and will start downloading the assets we need.

After a decade of waiting, the project will be ready. Now let’s make sure that it is running.

I go into the codeonion_tutorial project by cd codeonion_tutorial
Start the Server:

php artisan serve

Visit the IP address as provided by the console output. Mine by default shows http://localhost:8000
So it works. You can now create a database.

2. Creating a Database (mysql)

Lets learn how to create a database in phpmyadmin for a Laravel project. But first, lets enjoy this breathtaking performance by the star of this blog.

You might be using XAMPP, LAMPP or plain old terminal based mysql server. I don’t care. AS a professional, you must have to know how to create a database. Heck! You must be able to follow this tutorial with using other database engines as well. So help yourself and learn that part as well. Let me know if you want me to make a tutorial about that. Otherwise, just keep following.

I am using Windows and Xampp. Run the Mysql server and open phpmyadmin

Then visit http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

Now, let’s create a database. Press New as shown below:

A Create database page will open which is explained below:

Write name of your database to be.
Press Create
Done! (but also note these sub points)
1. It could
  1. Fail if it violates any rules of database server
  2. It could also fail if your database is not allowed
  3. It could also fail if your Hosting service limits you by number of databases you can make
2. Now how many bloggers would tell you about these things !! ;D

3. Performing Migration to create schema

Here, lets learn how to perform migrations and database configuration in Laravel.

Nothing is easy nowadays. You have publishers destroying true game developers and companies and then you have web frameworks made confusing by ignorant bloggers. I am all of them combined. So let’s configure our project database for migrations.

Our composer installation of the Laravel has already set the .env configuration file in place. But let’s do that manually to exercise the process.

Pointing out the .env configuration file of the Laravel Project

Go to the terminal/command line and execute the following command

The .env file will be created and we will now configure it for our database. Open the .env file in the root folder of your newly created project and find the following highlighted database configuration

Editing the .env configuration file in Laravel

Lets set it to match our database

Laravel default phpmyadmin mysql configuration

Migrations

First we have to clean the migration files created by composer. Go to the database/migrations/ folder and delete all files.

Now let’s create a migration file. Execute the following command from the root folder of the project.

php artisan make:migration create_messages_table

Now from the root folder, go to database/migrations/ folder and open the latest file which was created. Migration file that was created for me was:

2019_07_14_162743_create_messages_table.php

It has a timestamp along with the name I designated in the filename.

Open the file and lets add commands to create our “messages” table..

Initially, it will contain up and down functions (which handle what happens when we want the executions to be at up or down state in our database server).

Lets add the following line after the “id” column line in the up() function

$table->string(‘message’);

Editing the laravel migration file to refer to the table column

Lets run the migration using

php artisan migrate

Note that if you screwed up, then you can “undo” the migration using php artisan migrate:rollback but it is not necessary to do now.

At this time, go to phpmyadmin and you will see that our table has been created.

Table updated in phpmyadmin after migration was performed in Laravel

Now, lets make a web page which repeatedly inserts into that table and fetches all and displays into a page. Sweet!

4. Controller to repeatedly insert and render a View

Lets learn how to create a Model, controller, view and route for our Laravel project.

Our database is connected, migrations are up. Now we need to populate the table and then we need to display it on the screen. So lets start without any regular fuss that I am used to deliberately provide to you include this once.

MODEL CREATION

Lets learn how to create a Model for the messages table. This model will be used by the controller.

First, lets create a model by executing this command

php artisan make:model Message

Open the model file at root/app/Message.php and change its content to make sure that it points to the correct table. Add the highlighted line and save it.

Now we can use the model in our controller.

CONTROLLER CREATION

Lets learn how to make a controller for our view. This controller will call out modal to add a random message and fetch all messages.

We need to create a controller. From the root folder, execute this command
php artisan make:controller MessageHandler

Creating a controller in Laravel using command line

This will create a controller file in rootfolder/app/Http/Controllers

Open the root/app/Http/Controllers/MessageHandler.php and change the contents of the controller file as follows:

Laravel controller to insert into table and get all the records to display in a web page

This controller code:

Creates a random message
Saves it to the database in messages table.
Retrieves all the messages
Displays them in separate lines

Now, let’s make a route

ROUTE

Lets learn how to make a route for our controller.’s process_and_display action

Open root/routes/web.php and add this to the bottom of it:

Route::get(‘show_message’, ‘MessageHandler@process_and_display’);

We are now done with the MVC!

5. Test! and Conclusion

So we have done it all. Lets go to the http://localhost:8000/show_message and see what happens after we refresh the page several times.

Successfully showing the tutorial output

[jetpack_subscription_form show_only_email_and_button=”true” custom_background_button_color=”undefined” custom_text_button_color=”undefined” submit_button_text=”

Subscribe For More” submit_button_classes=”undefined” show_subscribers_total=”true” ]

You should now review the above steps. Go over the project you created and learn what was done in each step.Read documentation and learn more.

Please let me know in the comments about this post and tell me if there is more I can do. We have now learnt about Installation, Setup and Basic Laravel MVC usage to open a page with intro to the CRUD operations .