s5 laravel02.md

Introduction to Laravel API Development: Lesson 2 - Setting Up Your Laravel Development Environment

Welcome to the second lesson of the "Introduction to Laravel API Development" course! In this lesson, we'll guide you through setting up your development environment for building Laravel APIs. By the end of this lesson, you'll have a functional Laravel project ready for API development.

Installing Laravel To get started with Laravel, you'll need to have PHP and Composer installed on your system. Follow these steps to create a new Laravel project:

1. Install Composer: If you don't have Composer installed, download and install it from Composer's official website.

2. Create a New Laravel Project: Open your terminal and run the following command to create a new Laravel project named "api-project":

   composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel api-project
   

3. Navigate to Project Directory: Move into the project directory:

   cd api-project
   

4. Start the Development Server: Start the development server using the following command:

   php artisan serve
   

   This will launch the development server, and you can access your Laravel application at http://localhost:8000.

Configuring the Environment Laravel uses an .env file to store environment-specific configuration. Rename the .env.example file to .env and update the database connection settings according to your database setup.

Creating a Route for Your API Open the routes/api.php file to define routes for your API endpoints. For example, you can create a simple route that returns a JSON response:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

Route::get('/hello', function () {
    return ['message' => 'Hello, API!'];
});

Testing Your API Endpoint Open your browser or use a tool like Postman to access the /hello API endpoint at http://localhost:8000/api/hello.

Your Task: Create a Sample API Endpoint For this lesson's assignment, create a sample API endpoint that returns a list of items. Define a route, a controller method, and a corresponding JSON response.

Conclusion Congratulations! You've completed the second lesson in the "Introduction to Laravel API Development" course. You've learned how to set up your development environment, create a new Laravel project, configure environment settings, and define API routes. In the next lesson, we'll dive into creating routes and controllers for handling API requests. Keep up the great work on your journey to mastering Laravel API development!