Installation

You can run the boilerplate directly with PHP and your own database, or use the bundled Docker stack. Both paths are first-class.

Requirements

PHP 8.2+
Composer
Node.js & npm
A database (SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL)

Local setup

# 1. Clone
git clone <repository-url>
cd laravel-api-boilerplate

# 2. Install dependencies
composer install
npm install

# 3. Environment
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

# 4. Database — configure credentials in .env, then:
php artisan migrate --seed

The --seed flag runs the roles & permissions seeder so RBAC works out of the box.

Running the app

Start everything (server, queue, logs, Vite) with one command:

composer run dev

Or just the HTTP server:

php artisan serve

Docker

Prefer containers? The repo ships a full stack (Caddy, PHP-FPM, queue, scheduler, Postgres, Redis):

cp .env.example .env
cp docker/.env.docker.example docker/.env.docker

make up        # build + start the dev stack
make migrate   # first run only

The app is then reachable at http://localhost:8080. See the Docker guide for the full topology and production flow.

Verifying

php artisan test          # run the PHPUnit suite
php artisan scribe:generate  # build browsable API docs
./vendor/bin/pint         # fix code style

Next: review Configuration to understand how every module is toggled from a single file.