Foreword
When I first wrote the Laravel framework, it was because I needed a way to quickly develop my ideas for great web applications. Even more, I wanted to enjoy developing them. It turns out that the things I built to make my development enjoyable others have found enjoyable as well. Laravel has grown into a mature framework with a vibrant, friendly community, and shows promise of continuing to do so for years to come.
Laravel is a simple, yet powerful framework. Its syntax is terse, yet expressive. It is fitting that an introduction to Laravel would be just as sharp and straightforward, helping developers quickly learn how to build their web applications with the framework. I'm very pleased that Shawn has undertaken this work of providing a wonderful introduction to Laravel.
Shawn has been a key part of the Laravel community for some time, and has dedicated much of his time to helping other developers learn to build great applications. But, Shawn's experience isn't "all talk". He has proven himself as a Laravel developer by delivering production-ready applications to the world. I trust he will faithfully light the path on your journey to do the same.
Taylor Otwell,
Creator of the Laravel PHP framework
About the author
Shawn McCool is the co-founder of the web agency Big Name. He has been involved in professional web-application development for 15 years. His work emphasizes a philosophy of long-term software maintainability.
Shawn joined the Laravel team in 2012 and has been involved in updating and improving the official documentation.
Shawn is highly involved in community education and regularly creates education content and makes it freely available on his company site http://heybigname.com. Shawn spends much of his time involved with the Laravel community and can usually be found providing help in the official #Laravel IRC channel on FreeNode.
I'd like to thank my life partner Danielle and my business partner and favorite designer Justin for all of their encouragement.
About the reviewers
Alexander Cogneau is a student, who makes websites as a hobby. He is a developer for the FluxBB Forum Software. He has extensive knowledge of Laravel (the PHP MVC framework).
Terry Matula is a web developer and Laravel advocate based in Austin, TX.
He's been a passionate computer enthusiast since he first played Oregon Trail on an Apple computer. He started programming in BASIC, making simple Scott Adams-like games on a Commodore Vic-20, at a young age. Since then, he's worked as a developer using Flash/ActionScript, ASP.NET, PHP, and numerous PHP frameworks, with Laravel being his favorite by far.
He blogs web development tips and tricks at his website http://terrymatula.com.
I'd like to thank my beautiful wife Michelle for all her encouragement and support. I'd also like to thank my son Evan, for keeping me grounded and being a shining light in my life.
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Chapter 1. Laravel Starter
Welcome to the Laravel Starter. This book has been specially created to provide you with all the information that you need to get started with the Laravel web development framework. You will learn the basics of Laravel, get started with building your first web application, and discover some tips and tricks for using Laravel.
This guide contains the following sections:
So, what is Laravel? find out what Laravel actually is, what you can do with it, and why it's so great.
Installation this section will get you started on programming with Laravel. We'll go over installation and basic configuration so that we can get started on our application!
Quick start: Creating your first web application let's get started by making our own application. In this section, we'll develop a basic application that receives input from forms and then update a database accordingly.
Top 5 features you need to know about here we will go more in depth about what we've covered in the Quick start section. We'll learn more about Eloquent, authentication, filters, validation, and bundles.