Run Laravel locally on Ubuntu using Apache virtual host

Refresh APT metadata.

sudo apt update

Installing MySQL

Install MySQL:

sudo apt install mysql-server

Enter MySQL to edit the root user password:

sudo mysql

ALTER USER ‘root’@‘localhost’ IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY ‘password’;

Re-enter MySQL to create a database for our app, but using the credentials this time:

mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE my_app;

References:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu#step-2-installing-mysql

Installing Apache

Ubuntu usually comes bundled with a running Apache server but still, I’ll include the installation steps.

sudo apt-get install apache2 -y

Check if Apache is installed by verifying its version:

apache2ctl -v

Check if your firewall is active:

sudo ufw status

sudo ufw app list

If it returned Status: active then allow HTTP traffic on Apache:

sudo ufw allow in “Apache”

Now, visiting http://localhost should display “Apache2 Default Page”.

References:

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-and-configure-apache#2-installing-apache
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu#step-1-installing-apache-and-updating-the-firewall

Installing PHP

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Install PHP 8.1.

sudo apt install php8.1

If you opt for a different version then just replace 8.1 with your version whenever you copy a command.

Add PHP module to Apache server:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php8.1

Install the extensions required by Laravel:

sudo apt install php8.1-mbstring php8.1-xmlrpc php8.1-soap php8.1-gd php8.1-xml php8.1-cli php8.1-zip php8.1-bcmath php8.1-tokenizer php8.1-json php8.1-pear

The newly installed extensions will be automatically enabled with their configs placed at /etc/php/8.1/cli/conf.d/.

References:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu#step-3-installing-php
https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-install-laravel-on-ubuntu

Installing composer

Check https://getcomposer.org/download/.

A new Laravel app

cd

mkdir dev

cd dev

I like to place my code at ~/dev.

Create a new Laravel app:

composer global require laravel/installer

laravel new my_app –git

Set the correct permissions to enable Apache to execute your PHP code.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /home/me/dev/my_app/public

sudo chmod -R 755 /home/me/dev/my_app/public

sudo chmod o+x /home/me

sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev

sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev/

sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev/my_app

Set .env with your app and database details.

Faking a domain name

We will add a domain name for our app that only our machine knows about by editing /etc/hosts. We will configure it to let our machine know that the domain name my_app.local is on the loopback IP address 127.0.0.1.

nano /etc/hosts

# Add this line anywhere

127.0.0.1 my_app.local

Test that you configured the domain correctly by pinging it:

ping my_app.local

Note that using internet top-level domains like .com will most likely not work. So I recommend sticking to .local for testing locally without HTTPS and without a registered domain name.

Setting up the virtual host

Now we move to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and use as our base virtual host config file:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/

sudo cp 000-default.conf my_app-local.conf

nano my_app-local.conf

And edit my_app-local.conf to look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
# The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
# the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
# redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
# specifies what hostname must appear in the request’s Host: header to
# match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
# value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
# However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
ServerName my_app.local
ServerAlias www.my_app.local

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /home/me/dev/my_app/public

<Directory /home/me/dev/my_app/public>
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>

ReWriteEngine On

# Available loglevels: trace8, …, trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
# error, crit, alert, emerg.
# It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
# modules, e.g.
#LogLevel info ssl:warn

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

# For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
# enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
# include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
# following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
# after it has been globally disabled with “a2disconf”.
#Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>

Check the validity of the config you added:

sudo apache2ctl configtest

Enable your new site:

sudo a2ensite my_app-local.conf

Also, enable the rewrite module to be able to have URLs that do not point only to real files:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

The final thing to do is restart Apache to reload the new config:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

// or

sudo systemctl reload apache2

References:

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-and-configure-apache

Finally

Visit http://my_app.local.