How I Start a Laravel Project

2025 Edition

This is my own preferred way to start a fresh Laravel project. It leverages some recommended Laravel defaults such as Vite and Laravel Pint, but it also deviates from the defaults in ways that I prefer, such as using my own docker setup instead of Laravel Sail.

Stack

• PHP 8.4
• Laravel 11
• Tailwind 3.4
• Node 22
• PostgreSQL 17

Features

• Vite for asset management
• Yarn for node dependency management
• Larastan and PHPStan for static analysis
• Laravel Pint for PHP code formatting
• Prettier for JavaScript and Blade code formatting
• MailPit for email previews and testing

Getting Started

You can use this repository as a starting point for a new project:

1. Clone the repository into a new project folder.
2. Remove the existing .git file and run git init to start with a fresh git history.
3. Run docker compose build to build the local environment images.
4. Install and update the PHP dependencies: docker compose run --rm php composer update.
5. Install the node dependencies: docker compose run --rm node yarn.
6. Optional: Add an entry to your hosts file for the local project domain.
7. Spin up the containers: docker compose up -d.
8. Run the database migrations: docker compose exec php php artisan migrate

You should now be able to view the project in a web browser.

To view mail go to localhost:8025 when the containers are running.

Helper Script

This project includes an ops.sh script that serves as a helper for accessing tools in docker. This is an idea that I borrowed from Chris Fidao and his Shipping Docker course. To make best use of it, you will need to set up a bash alias:

app() {
    cd /full/path/to/project
    ./ops.sh ${*:-ps}
    cd $OLDPWD
}

You can call the function whatever you would like. With this alias in place you can now easily run development tasks:

project $ app artisan make:model Team -mfs # Make a new model with a migration, factory and seeder
project $ app composer require [package] # Add a PHP package with Composer
project $ app composer format # Run Laravel Pint to format PHP code
project $ app composer phpstan # Run PHPStan for static analysis
project $ app composer test # Run the test suite
project $ app psql app_dev # Drop into the postgres cli
project $ app yarn add [package] # Add a node dependency with Yarn
project $ app yarn format # Run a yarn script

This script is easily extendible if you add more services to the docker environment.