Launch A Todo App Using Laravel Homestead

Our goal? To launch a simple to-do app using Laravel Homestead on macOS. ✅️

I created a simple to-do app in Laravel 5.3 using Homestead as part of an engineering internship screening for DoSomething.org. In the end, nothing really came of it. 💀️ 🔍 zoom🔍 zoom🔍 zoom The source code can be found at https://github.com/fvcproductions/ds-todos.The full process for setting up Laravel 5.3 is pretty tedious so I created my own tutorial which you can find below.

Our goal? To launch a simple to-do app using Laravel Homestead on macOS.

This is QUITE a tedious process (if you ask me), but I’ll try to condense it into a simple 30 step process (LOL). 😂This is how the completed app looks like.

You will need…

• Basic Terminal Knowledge I will be referring to a lot of commands you’ll have to type in.

Installation Process

• Download Vagrant
• Download VirtualBox
• Clone or download my sample to-do app- Option 1. Use a GitHub client like Tower
• Option 2. git clone //GitHub.com/fvcproductions/ds-todos.git-
• Make note of the file path for this repo by using pwd, i.e. ~/Dropbox/GitHub/ds-todos
• cd ~ && vagrant box laravel/homestead
• They will ask for the provider so we are going to enter in 1 since we are using VirtualBox
• cd ~ && mkdir Code We will need this folder later
• Clone down Laravel Homestead and install it in a folder called Homestead usingcd ~ && git clone //GitHub.com/laravel/homestead.git Homestead
• Initialize Homestead using cd Homestead && bash init.sh
• While still in ~/Homestead folder, sudo nano /private/etc/hosts to edit the hosts file and add on these two lines (refer below)
• Create a key to authorize ssh using cd ~/Homestead && ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096
• Hit Enter twice (you don’t have to enter a password)
• Time to start up Vagrant using cd ~/Homestead && vagrant up and enter password when asked
• Edit the Homestead.yaml file to configure locations of code using nano ~/.homestead/Homestead.yaml and make thefolder and sites sections look like this (refer below) ❗ Anytime you edit this Homestead.yaml file, you have to perform the next 3 steps in order for it to work, so let’s go ahead and do those now.
• Stop vagrant temporarily by using vagrant halt
• Reload yaml configurations by using vagrant reload --provision and enter password when asked
• While still in ~/Homestead folder, use vagrant ssh to enter into your Vagrant setup
• Enter into your Code folder you created earlier and then your ds-todos app using cd ~/Code/ds-todos
• While you’re in your ds-todos folder, use composer install to install the necessary dependencies for the to-do app
• You will also need to configure your environment for ds-todos by creating an .env file and typing the following in (refer below) using touch .env && nano .env
• Use php artisan migrate to migrate the app data over
• Then use php artisan db:seed to seed the database
• Finally, use php artisan key:generate to generate an app key for security purposes
• At this point, you should be able to head over to //ds-todos.app in your browser and marvel at being able to set this all up! 🎉

Optional - Compiling SASS

If you want to compile SASS files, you will first have to install all npm dependencies using npm i. Then just perform a gulp watch and you’re good to go. Anytime you edit the SASS files, gulp will check it and compile it down to CSS.

Hosts

192.168.10.10 homestead.app

192.168.10.10 ds-todos.app

YAML Config

❗ Since my ds-todos code is located in ~Dropbox/GitHub/ds-todos, that’s where I map it to. However, you probably have it located elsewhere so make sure to get the right file path of that app using pwd in Terminal.folders:

• map: ~/Code

  to: /home/vagrant/Code

  type: "nfs"

• map: ~/Dropbox/GitHub/ds-todos

  to: /home/vagrant/Code/ds-todos

  type: "nfs"

sites:

• map: homestead.app

  to: /home/vagrant/Code/Laravel/public

• map: ds-todos.app

  to: /home/vagrant/Code/ds-todos/public

[Environment Setup]

APP_ENV=local

APP_DEBUG=true

APP_KEY=SomeRandomString

APP_URL=//localhost

DB_CONNECTION=mysql

DB_HOST=127.0.0.1

DB_PORT=3306

DB_DATABASE=homestead

DB_USERNAME=homestead

DB_PASSWORD=secret

CACHE_DRIVER=file

SESSION_DRIVER=file

QUEUE_DRIVER=sync

REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1

REDIS_PASSWORD=null

REDIS_PORT=6379

MAIL_DRIVER=smtp

MAIL_HOST=mailtrap.io

MAIL_PORT=2525

MAIL_USERNAME=null

MAIL_PASSWORD=null

MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null