Getting Started

Goal

This snapshot advances Marlowe Gazette by teaching you to create and run a clean Laravel application on port 8000.

Every numbered folder is complete and independently runnable, so you can inspect this stage without rebuilding earlier lessons.

Prerequisites

Use PHP 8.2 or newer, Composer, Docker, and a terminal. Basic PHP, HTML, and SQL familiarity will help.

The Laravel development server uses port 8000. Root Docker Compose exposes MySQL 8 on port 3307 and each snapshot has a separate database.

• PHP and Composer
• Docker
• A code editor and terminal

Concepts

Laravel's front controller boots the service container and sends each request through the HTTP kernel.

Laravel keeps HTTP routes, controllers, Eloquent models, validation, authorization, and Blade presentation in explicit layers.

Walkthrough

Review the project structure, environment configuration, Artisan commands, and health endpoint.

Inspect the matching snapshot around the example. The repository includes validation, errors, CSRF protection, and the surrounding application structure.

php artisan serve --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8000
php artisan about

Run and verify

Start MySQL from the repository root, enter 01-Getting-Started, install dependencies, copy the environment file, generate an application key, migrate, seed, and serve.

Open http://localhost:8000. From data lessons onward, Ada and Grace are deterministic accounts with password password123.

docker compose up -d
git clone https://github.com/michaeldunga1/fcc-laravel-blog.git
cd fcc-laravel-blog/01-Getting-Started
composer install
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
php artisan migrate --seed
php artisan storage:link
php artisan serve --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8000

Troubleshooting

If Artisan cannot start, confirm Composer dependencies exist and PHP meets the version constraint.

If MySQL fails, verify Docker is healthy, port 3307 is free, and this snapshot's DB_DATABASE matches its unique marlowe_XX database.

• Read the first exception
• Clear cached config after environment changes
• Never commit .env, vendor, or node_modules

Try this

Change the application name and inspect it with php artisan config:show app.

Exercise both a successful request and a validation or authorization failure before moving to the next snapshot.

• Make one focused change
• Test it in the browser
• Compare the next snapshot after it works