[Laravel](https://laravel.com/) is a free and open-source PHP web framework available on [GitHub](https://github.com/laravel/laravel) and licensed under the terms of MIT License. It was created by Taylor Otwell and designed with the objective of enabling rapid development of web applications following the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern. It has gained a lot of traction over the years and is now the most starred PHP framework on GitHub.
Some of the main features found in Laravel are different ways for accessing relational databases, utilities that aid in application deployment and maintenance, and a modular packaging system with a dedicated dependency manager. Laravel also simplifies a lot of common tasks found in web development and provides out of the box solutions for things like authentication, routing, and queues, allowing you to focus on your application. If you are a Mac user, you can install Valet as a development environment which is build for Laravel.
Because Laravel is open-source, the community around it is very strong and the documentation is top-notch and example driven. Take a look at the [official documentation](https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/) to get a glimpse of how easy it is to use!
Laravel also has its own online learning platform, [Laracasts](https://laracasts.com/), which offers extensive video tutorials (some free, some available with paid subscription) on Laravel as well as PHP, Javascript, and other web development topics. The free introductory series [Laravel 5.4 From Scratch](https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-from-scratch-2017) is a great place to start.
- **Cashier** - introduced in Laravel 4.2, provides an interface for managing subscription billing services provided by Stripe, such as handling coupons and generating invoices.
- **SSH** - introduced in Laravel 4.1, allows programmatic execution of CLI commands on remote servers using the Secure Shell (SSH) as an encrypted network protocol.
- **Scheduler** - introduced in Laravel 5.0, is an addition to the Artisan command-line utility that allows programmatic scheduling of periodically executed tasks. Internally, Scheduler relies on the cron daemon to run a single Artisan job that, in turn, executes the configured tasks.
- **Flysystem** - introduced in Laravel 5.0, is a file system abstraction layer that allows local file systems and cloud-based storage services provided by Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloud to be used transparently and in the same way.
- **Socialite** - introduced in Laravel 5.0 as an optional package, provides simplified mechanisms for authentication with different OAuth providers, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, GitHub and Bitbucket.
The Laravel framework has a few system requirements. Of course, all of these requirements are satisfied by the Laravel Homestead virtual machine, so it's highly recommended that you use [Homestead](https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/homestead) as your local Laravel development environment.
However, if you are not using Homestead, you will need to make sure your server meets the following requirements:
The [latest release](https://laravel-news.com/laravel-5-7-is-now-released) of Laravel is 5.7 and includes optional email verification in the authentication scaffolding. Laravel can be installed using [Composer](https://getcomposer.org/).
Laravel utilizes [Composer](https://getcomposer.org/) to manage its dependencies. Before using Laravel, make sure you have Composer installed on your machine.
#### Via Laravel Installer
First, download the Laravel installer using Composer:
```sh
> composer global require laravel/installer
```
Make sure to place composer's system-wide vendor bin directory in your `$PATH` variable so the laravel executable can be located by your system. This directory exists in different locations based on your operating system; however, some common locations include:
- macOS: `$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin`
- GNU / Linux Distributions: `$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin`
Once installed, the laravel `new` command will create a fresh Laravel installation in the directory you specify. For instance, laravel new blog will create a directory named blog containing a fresh Laravel installation with all of Laravel's dependencies already installed:
```sh
> laravel new blog
```
#### Via Composer Create-Project
Alternatively, you may also install Laravel by issuing the Composer create-project command in your terminal:
```sh
> composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog
```
Local Development Server
If you have PHP installed locally and you would like to use PHP's built-in development server to serve your application, you may use the Artisan `serve` command. This command will start a development server at `http://localhost:8000`:
```sh
> php artisan serve
```
Of course, more robust local development options are available via Homestead and Valet.
For details visit [LARAVEL HOME](https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/installation).
