SOFTWARE ENGINEERING & WEB DEVELOPMENT

PhpStorm is considered one of the famous and most commonly used IDEs for PHP developers beside NetBeans and Sublime. We can take the full advantage of this IDE when creating Web Applications using Laravel PHP Framework. As a default PhpStorm is not shipped with Laravel features support or plug-in installed.

In this article I am going to show you how to install Laravel plug-in for PhpStorm after downloading Barry vd. Heuvel code in two main steps. Notice that this article assumes that you already had installed the required package to run a Laravel project on your local server like composer and Laravel files, if you need more information you can visit Laravel 5.1 Installation page.

Stage 1:

Step 1:

In your CMD and by using composer, copy the following line from barryvdh's GitHub page and paste it into the command prompt, or just type it:

composer require barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper

You can also use PhpStorm Terminal window (at the bottom of the IDE) to run the composer or Laravel Artisan commands

Step 2:

After creating a new PHP project (contains the initial Laravel folders and files), copy the following line of code from the same page: Barryvdh\LaravelIdeHelper\IdeHelperServiceProvider::class, Then using PhpStorm you need to navigate to the wanted file:

Project Root >> config >> app.php

After opening the app.php file, search for providers array: 'providers' => [...

paste your copied line after 'Illuminate\View\ViewServiceProvider',

'Barryvdh\LaravelIdeHelper\IdeHelperServiceProvider::class',

Step 3:

using CMD or PhpStorm window run the command:

php artisan ide-helper:generate

Stage 2:

After finishing all the steps in stage 1, you should be ready to install Laravel 5 plug-in

Go to to File Menu >> Settings (CTRL+ALT+S for new PhpStorm versions or Alt+F7 for old versions):

From the left pane select Plugins category, then in the search box search for laravel

you will see Laravel Plugin highlighted, you can click install now, and then Restart the IDE to complete the installation of the plugin

For more details you can visit Laravel Development using PhpStorm

When using CI (PHP Framework), you will notice that CI includes index.php in the URL for any link to any file. When you search for this issue by typing: “ci remove index.php from url”, you will see the link to Ellislab user guide that describes how to fix or solve this issue as shown in the image below:

Now the explanation is very simple and clear, but unfortunately is not complete! In this post I will try to show you what I did to get my project links to work without including index.php in the URL.

Step1:

When you first install CI, you will notice the .htaccess file is inside sub folder called “Application”. You need to move it (.htaccess) to the root folder of your project. For example, if your CI website is inside a sub folder named "myproject": www.mywebsite.com/myproject, .htaccess has to be inside "myproject" folder (directory).

Step2:

Open .htaccess, clear it then write the following code:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /myproject/

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^application.*

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]

ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

Notice that in the second line of the code, the CI website name is myproject. You need to change it based on your project root folder name.

Step 3:

Open config.php file here is the path for this file:

Myproject/application/config/config.php

First:

You will see the following comment plus $config['base_url']

// the config[base url] file is the root folder name and anything before that:

Change the value of $config['base_url'] to:

For localhost (on your pc):
$config['base_url'] = ‘http://localhost/myproject/’;

For your online server:
$config['base_url'] = ‘http://www.mydomain.com/myproject/’;

Second:

In the same file (config.php), you will see the line: $config['index_page'] = ‘index.php’;

Remove the index.php as shown below:

$config['index_page'] = ”;

Step4:

I assume you have your main navigation links inside php template file named header, navigation, or any name you chose. You need to change the links in your main nav to look like this:

<li><a href=”<?php echo base_url();?>mainsite/home”>home</a></li>

mainsite is your main controller name
home is the function name inside your mainsite controller that load home page from the view folder