How to develop a Laravel Application?

Developing a Laravel application involves a structured lifecycle, from environment setup to deployment. with Laravel, the focus is on performance, lean directory structures, and a simplified starter ecosystem for modern PHP development.

1. Prerequisites and Environment Setup

Before starting, ensure your environment meets modern requirements:

• PHP 8.3 or higher (Laravel requirement)
• Composer for dependency management
• Node.js & NPM for front-end assets
• Docker (optional, recommended via Laravel Sail)

2. Creating the Project

Start efficiently using the Laravel Installer:

composer global require laravel/installer
laravel new my-app

During installation, you will choose:

• Starter Kit: Breeze (simple auth) or Jetstream (advanced features)
• Testing Framework: Pest (standard) or PHPUnit
• Database: MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite

3. Development Workflow (MVC Pattern)

Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller architecture. Typical workflow:

A. Database and Migrations

php artisan make:model Task -m
php artisan migrate

Create your models and define the database schema in migration files.

B. Routing and Controllers

use App\Http\Controllers\TaskController;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

Route::get('/tasks', [TaskController::class, 'index']);

Generate controller:

php artisan make:controller TaskController

C. Business Logic (Models)

Use Eloquent ORM for database operations:

public function index() {
    $tasks = Task::all();
    return view('tasks.index', compact('tasks'));
}

D. Frontend (Views)

Laravel supports Blade, Livewire (TALL stack), or Inertia.js (Vue/React) for frontend development.

4. Modern Laravel Standards

• Vite: Fast frontend bundling
• Laravel Pulse: Application performance monitoring
• Folio & Volt: Functional routing and single-file Livewire components
• Action Classes: Move business logic out of controllers for testability

5. Testing and Quality Assurance

• Pest: Functional and readable tests
• Laravel Pint: Automatic code style fixing
• PHPStan: Static analysis to catch bugs early

6. Deployment

After development, deploy using modern tools:

• Laravel Forge: Manage VPS deployments (DigitalOcean, AWS)
• Laravel Cloud: Serverless deployments with auto-scaling (standard)