Laravel Starter Guide

This guide will walk you through the process of launching a PHP app using the Laravel framework. See it deployed live here.

📘 Want to skip the reading? Deploy this starter template directly from the Aptible Dashboard.

Prerequisites

Please complete the following steps before moving forward:

• Install Git
• Install the Aptible CLI
• Add an SSH public key to your Aptible user account.

Clone the Repo

Clone the template-laravel repo to your local machine.

Create an App

Create an App using the Dashboard or the aptible apps:create command:

# Set or substitute $APP_HANDLE with the app name of your choice

aptible apps:create "$APP_HANDLE"

Until you push code and trigger a build, Aptible uses the App as a placeholder. Once provisioned, copy the App's Git Remote from the Dashboard or when it is returned in the CLI. The Remote will be referred to as $GIT_REMOTE moving forward.

Create an App Key

Create an App key using the php artisan key:generate command, which will generate an APP_KEY value in the .env file. Update your app's configuration using the aptible config:set CLI command, substituting $NEW_APP_KEY:

aptible config:set --app "$APP_HANDLE" \
        "APP_KEY=$NEW_APP_KEY"

Push your code

Push the cloned repo to Aptible by adding Aptible as a git remote for your app, and then using git push to push your code:

git remote add aptible "$GIT_REMOTE"
git push aptible main

You can use the logs that will stream to your terminal to understand the cause of failure in case anything goes wrong.

Add a Default Endpoint

Now that your app is running, you need to create a default Endpoint to see it in action. Each endpoint defines an Elastic Load Balancer and one or more proxies that provide SSL termination; these expose your application to the web and keep your traffic secure, respectively.

In the Dashboard, select your app and navigate to the Endpoints tab. Create your first endpoint with all of the default settings, and click Save Endpoint. This configuration will use the Default Domain of *.on-aptible.com to route traffic to your application. Later on, you can create your own endpoint with a Custom Domain. It is also possible to create the endpoint using the CLI command aptible endpoints:https:create.

After the endpoint is provisioned, the configured hostname will be available to accept traffic.

Optional Next steps:

Provision a Database

Add a PostgreSQL or MySQL Database for your App using the Dashboard or via the aptible db:createCLI command, substituting $DB_HANDLE with the database name of your choice:

PostgreSQL:

aptible db:create "$DB_HANDLE" --type postgresql

MySQL:

aptible db:create "$DB_HANDLE" --type mysql

The aptible db:create command will return a connection string on success. This is a Database Credential that is needed to configure your App. This connection string can be accessed in the Dashboard by clicking on Reveal under Credentials in the database page. Going forward in this document, we'll refer to the Credentials as $DATABASE_URL.

📘 Databases are only reachable from within your Stack's internal network. This means your Containers will be able to connect to your database, but if you want to connect from your workstation, you'll need to use a Database Tunnel.

Update App Configuration

Configure the App to point it to the newly provisioned Database by adding the required environment variable. Use the aptible config:set command as documented below, substituting $APP_HANDLE and $DATABASE_URL with their proper values.

aptible config:set --app "$APP_HANDLE" \
  "DB_CONNECTION=aptible" \
  "DATABASE_URL=$DATABASE_URL" \
  "APP_DEBUG=false"

This command will result in the app deploying again to reflect the updated configuration.

Session Storage

By default, Laravel stores sessions on the local disk. However, on Aptible, container filesystems are ephemeral, so whenever a new Release is created for your App (i.e., whenever it's restarted, deployed, scaled, etc.), sessions stored on disk will be lost, and your users will be logged out. Additionally, if your App is scaled to multiple containers, each container will have its own session store.

Storing sessions in the database will allow them to persist across Releases and allow all of the App's containers to use the same session store. To store sessions in the database, you need to do two things.

1. Create a database migration that creates the tables for your sessions by running php artisan session:table and commit the migration to version control. Since you automated database migrations, deploy the App now to update it and run all pending migrations.
2. Instruct Laravel to use your database to store sessions by setting the SESSION_DRIVER environment variable:

aptible config:set --app "$APP_HANDLE" \
        "SESSION_DRIVER=database"