Laravel’s Directory Structure

When you open up a directory that contains a skeleton Laravel application, you’ll see the
following files and directories:
app/
bootstrap/
config/
database/
public/
resources/
routes/
storage/
tests/
vendor/
.env
.env.example
.gitattributes
.gitignore
artisan
composer.json
composer.lock
gulpfile.js
package.json
phpunit.xml
readme.md
server.php
Let’s walk through them one by one to get familiar.

The Folders

The root directory contains the following folders by default:

• app is where the bulk of your actual application will go. Models, controllers, route definitions, commands, and your PHP domain code all go in here.
• bootstrap contains the files that the Laravel framework uses to boot every time it runs.
• config is where all the configuration files live.
• database is where database migrations and seeds live.
• public is the directory the server points to when it’s serving the website. This contains index.php, which is the front controller that kicks off the bootstrapping process and routes all requests appropriately. It’s also where any public-facing files like images, stylesheets, scripts, or downloads go.
• resources is where non-PHP files that are needed for other scripts live. Views, language files, and (optionally) Sass/LESS and source JavaScript files live here.
• routes is where all of the route definitions live, both for HTTP routes and “consoleroutes,” or Artisan commands.
• storage is where caches, logs, and compiled system files live.
• tests is where unit and integration tests live.
• vendor is where Composer installs its dependencies. It’s Git-ignored (marked to be excluded from your version control system), as Composer is expected to run as a part of your deploy process on any remote servers.

The Loose Files

The root directory also contains the following files:

• .env and .env.example are the files that dictate the environment variables (variables that are expected to be different in each environment and are therefore not committed to version control). .env.example is a template that each environment should duplicate to create its own .env file, which is Git-ignored.
• artisan is the file that allows you to run Artisan commands (see Chapter 7) from the command line.
• .gitignore and .gitattributes are Git configuration files.
• composer.json and composer.lock are the configuration files for Composer; composer.json is user-editable and composer.lock is not. These files share some basic information about this project and also define its PHP dependencies.
• gulpfile.js is the (optional) configuration file for Elixir and Gulp. This is for compiling and processing your frontend assets.
• package.json is like composer.json but for frontend assets.
• phpunit.xml is a configuration file for PHPUnit, the tool Laravel uses for testing out of the box.
• readme.md is a Markdown file giving a basic introduction to Laravel.
• server.php is a backup server that tries to allow less-capable servers to still preview the Laravel application.