Laravel Blog

This is application is made for demonstrating features of Laravel, and to help one get started with framework quickly.

Installation:

Download and install XAMPP from https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html (7.1.7 as of this writing)
Download and install Composer from https://getcomposer.org/download/ (1.4.2 as of this writing)
Install Laravel using Composer via command prompt: composer global require "laravel/installer"
Ensure $HOME/.composer/vendor/bin is added to Path (should already be done by default, but worth checking)

Create an application directory anywhere you like via command prompt: laravel new <appName>
Import project directory in your favorite IDE and run php artisan serve to host the web application
Create new user and new database via phpmyadmin, update .env file with corresponding details
Run php artisan migrate and if it fails with error about key being too long, then drop all tables from the database, update AppServiceProvider.php as follows, and attempt migration again:
```
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
...
public function boot()
{
    Schema::defaultStringLength(191);
}
```
Run php artisan make:auth to generate scaffolding for authentication
Update .env file to set SMTP details for testing authentication features, using Gmail's SMTP Settings, and then run php artisan serve again to play around.
Use php artisan make:model -mcr <Entity> to create model, Migration, and Controller that works with the Resource. Then perform migration, update ModelFactory.php to add new factory definition, seed database using php artisan tinker, and add new routes to web.php for each of the methods in Controller to play around.

Session Flash, View Composer, Middleware, Events, Localization, Task Scheduling, Queues, APIs