Introduction

Welcome back to "Building with Laravel: A Guided Series for Beginners." In our previous episodes, we covered the basics of Laravel installation and setting up a development environment. Today, we'll dive into one of the fundamental aspects of Laravel: its folder structure.

Laravel Folder Structure

Laravel's folder structure is designed to follow a specific organization pattern, making it easy to navigate and maintain your application's codebase. Understanding this structure is crucial for every Laravel developer, as it helps you locate files and implement features efficiently. So, let's take a closer look at the folders and files you'll encounter in a typical Laravel project.

Upon creating a new Laravel project, you'll find the following main folders and files:

1. app: This directory serves as the heart of your Laravel application. It contains your application's core code, including models, controllers, middleware, and more. The app folder is where you'll spend most of your development time.

2. bootstrap: The bootstrap folder contains files that are responsible for bootstrapping and initializing your Laravel application. You'll rarely need to modify files within this folder.

3. config: The config folder houses all the configuration files for your application. Here, you can modify settings for various components, such as database connections, service providers, and more.

4. database: Laravel's database folder contains migrations, seeds, and factories. Migrations allow you to manage database schema changes, while seeds provide a convenient way to populate your database with dummy data. Factories help you generate fake data for testing purposes.

5. public: The public folder is the entry point for your application. It contains the index.php file, which serves as the front controller for all incoming HTTP requests. The public folder also holds publicly accessible assets like images, CSS, JavaScript, and compiled assets.

6. resources: The resources folder is where you store your application's non-PHP resources. This includes views, language files, and raw assets like SASS or LESS files. Views are stored within the views subfolder, while language files reside in the lang subfolder.

7. routes: The routes folder contains all the route definitions for your application. Routes define how your application responds to different HTTP requests. You can define routes in several files within this folder, such as web.php for web routes and api.php for API routes.

8. storage: Laravel uses the storage folder to store various files generated by the framework, such as logs, cached views, and session data. It also provides a storage/app/public directory for storing user-uploaded files, which can be accessed publicly.

9. tests: The tests folder is where you write automated tests for your application. Laravel comes with a testing framework that makes it easy to write and execute tests to ensure your application functions as expected.

10. vendor: The vendor folder houses all the third-party libraries and dependencies installed via Composer, Laravel's dependency manager. You'll rarely modify files within this folder, as it is managed by Composer.

11. resources/views: Within the resources folder, you'll find the views subfolder. This is where you'll store all your application's blade templates. Blade is Laravel's powerful templating engine that allows you to create dynamic and reusable views. The "views" folder typically contains multiple subfolders, each representing a different section or feature of your application.

The "views" folder plays a crucial role in Laravel's folder structure as it houses the templates responsible for generating the user interface and displaying information to users. Understanding how to structure and leverage the "views"

folder will empower you to create visually appealing and dynamic web applications with Laravel.

Laravel Folder Structure (Visual Representation)

my-laravel-project/
├── app/
├── bootstrap/
├── config/
├── database/
├── public/
├── resources/
│   ├── lang/
│   └── views/
├── routes/
├── storage/
│   ├── app/
│   ├── framework/
│   └── logs/
├── tests/
└── vendor/

These are the core folders you'll encounter in a Laravel project. Keep in mind that Laravel follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architectural pattern, and the folder structure aligns with this design philosophy. However, as your application grows, you may introduce additional folders and files to organize specific functionality.

Conclusion

Understanding Laravel's folder structure is crucial for efficient development and collaboration. It provides a clear separation of concerns and allows you to locate and modify code easily. With this knowledge in hand, you're well-equipped to dive deeper into Laravel and build robust web applications.

That's it for this episode! In our next installment, we'll explore "Laravel Fundamentals: Exploring the core concepts of Laravel, such as routing, views, models, controllers, migrations, and database interactions."

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Happy coding!

Useful Links

Laravel Docs: laravel.com

Laravel Daily: laraveldaily.com

Laracast: laracasts.com