27 KiB
Laravel Valet
- Introduction
- Installation
- Upgrading Valet
- Serving Sites
- The "Park" Command
- The "Link" Command
- Securing Sites With TLS
- Serving a Default Site
- Per-Site PHP Versions
- Sharing Sites
- Sharing Sites on Your Local Network
- Site Specific Environment Variables
- Proxying Services
- Custom Valet Drivers
- Local Drivers
- Other Valet Commands
- Valet Directories and Files
- Disk Access
Introduction
Looking for an even easier way to develop Laravel applications on macOS or Windows? Check out Laravel Herd. Herd includes everything you need to get started with Laravel development, including Valet, PHP, and Composer.
Laravel Valet is a development environment
for macOS minimalists. Laravel Valet configures your Mac to always run
Nginx in the background when your machine starts.
Then, using DnsMasq, Valet proxies
all requests on the *.test domain to point to sites installed on your local
machine.
In other words, Valet is a blazing fast Laravel development environment that uses roughly 7 MB of RAM. Valet isn't a complete replacement for Sail or Homestead, but provides a great alternative if you want flexible basics, prefer extreme speed, or are working on a machine with a limited amount of RAM.
Out of the box, Valet support includes, but is not limited to:
- Laravel
- Bedrock
- CakePHP 3
- ConcreteCMS
- Contao
- Craft
- Drupal
- ExpressionEngine
- Jigsaw
- Joomla
- Katana
- Kirby
- Magento
- OctoberCMS
- Sculpin
- Slim
- Statamic
- Static HTML
- Symfony
- WordPress
- Zend
However, you may extend Valet with your own custom drivers.
Installation
Valet requires macOS and Homebrew. Before installation, you should make sure that no other programs such as Apache or Nginx are binding to your local machine's port 80.
To get started, you first need to ensure that Homebrew is up to date using the
update command:
1brew update
brew update
Next, you should use Homebrew to install PHP:
1brew install php
brew install php
After installing PHP, you are ready to install the Composer package
manager. In addition, you should make sure the
$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin directory is in your system's "PATH". After
Composer has been installed, you may install Laravel Valet as a global
Composer package:
1composer global require laravel/valet
composer global require laravel/valet
Finally, you may execute Valet's install command. This will configure and
install Valet and DnsMasq. In addition, the daemons Valet depends on will be
configured to launch when your system starts:
1valet install
valet install
Once Valet is installed, try pinging any *.test domain on your terminal
using a command such as ping foobar.test. If Valet is installed correctly
you should see this domain responding on 127.0.0.1.
Valet will automatically start its required services each time your machine boots.
PHP Versions
Instead of modifying your global PHP version, you can instruct Valet to use
per-site PHP versions via the isolate command.
Valet allows you to switch PHP versions using the valet use php@version
command. Valet will install the specified PHP version via Homebrew if it is
not already installed:
1valet use [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)
2
3valet use php
valet use [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)
valet use php
You may also create a .valetrc file in the root of your project. The
.valetrc file should contain the PHP version the site should use:
1php=php@8.2
[[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)
Once this file has been created, you may simply execute the valet use
command and the command will determine the site's preferred PHP version by
reading the file.
Valet only serves one PHP version at a time, even if you have multiple PHP versions installed.
Database
If your application needs a database, check out DBngin,
which provides a free, all-in-one database management tool that includes
MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Redis. After DBngin has been installed, you can connect
to your database at 127.0.0.1 using the root username and an empty string
for the password.
Resetting Your Installation
If you are having trouble getting your Valet installation to run properly,
executing the composer global require laravel/valet command followed by
valet install will reset your installation and can solve a variety of
problems. In rare cases, it may be necessary to "hard reset" Valet by
executing valet uninstall --force followed by valet install.
Upgrading Valet
You may update your Valet installation by executing the composer global require laravel/valet command in your terminal. After upgrading, it is good
practice to run the valet install command so Valet can make additional
upgrades to your configuration files if necessary.
Upgrading to Valet 4
If you're upgrading from Valet 3 to Valet 4, take the following steps to properly upgrade your Valet installation:
- If you've added
.valetphprcfiles to customize your site's PHP version, rename each.valetphprcfile to.valetrc. Then, prependphp=to the existing content of the.valetrcfile. - Update any custom drivers to match the namespace, extension, type-hints, and return type-hints of the new driver system. You may consult Valet's SampleValetDriver as an example.
- If you use PHP 7.1 - 7.4 to serve your sites, make sure you still use Homebrew to install a version of PHP that's 8.0 or higher, as Valet will use this version, even if it's not your primary linked version, to run some of its scripts.
Serving Sites
Once Valet is installed, you're ready to start serving your Laravel
applications. Valet provides two commands to help you serve your applications:
park and link.
The park Command
The park command registers a directory on your machine that contains your
applications. Once the directory has been "parked" with Valet, all of the
directories within that directory will be accessible in your web browser at
http://<directory-name>.test:
1cd ~/Sites
2
3valet park
cd ~/Sites
valet park
That's all there is to it. Now, any application you create within your
"parked" directory will automatically be served using the http://<directory- name>.test convention. So, if your parked directory contains a directory
named "laravel", the application within that directory will be accessible at
http://laravel.test. In addition, Valet automatically allows you to access
the site using wildcard subdomains (http://foo.laravel.test).
The link Command
The link command can also be used to serve your Laravel applications. This
command is useful if you want to serve a single site in a directory and not
the entire directory:
1cd ~/Sites/laravel
2
3valet link
cd ~/Sites/laravel
valet link
Once an application has been linked to Valet using the link command, you may
access the application using its directory name. So, the site that was linked
in the example above may be accessed at http://laravel.test. In addition,
Valet automatically allows you to access the site using wildcard sub-domains
(http://foo.laravel.test).
If you would like to serve the application at a different hostname, you may
pass the hostname to the link command. For example, you may run the
following command to make an application available at
http://application.test:
1cd ~/Sites/laravel
2
3valet link application
cd ~/Sites/laravel
valet link application
Of course, you may also serve applications on subdomains using the link
command:
1valet link api.application
valet link api.application
You may execute the links command to display a list of all of your linked
directories:
1valet links
valet links
The unlink command may be used to destroy the symbolic link for a site:
1cd ~/Sites/laravel
2
3valet unlink
cd ~/Sites/laravel
valet unlink
Securing Sites With TLS
By default, Valet serves sites over HTTP. However, if you would like to serve
a site over encrypted TLS using HTTP/2, you may use the secure command. For
example, if your site is being served by Valet on the laravel.test domain,
you should run the following command to secure it:
1valet secure laravel
valet secure laravel
To "unsecure" a site and revert back to serving its traffic over plain HTTP,
use the unsecure command. Like the secure command, this command accepts
the hostname that you wish to unsecure:
1valet unsecure laravel
valet unsecure laravel
Serving a Default Site
Sometimes, you may wish to configure Valet to serve a "default" site instead
of a 404 when visiting an unknown test domain. To accomplish this, you may
add a default option to your ~/.config/valet/config.json configuration
file containing the path to the site that should serve as your default site:
1"default": "/Users/Sally/Sites/example-site",
"default": "/Users/Sally/Sites/example-site",
Per-Site PHP Versions
By default, Valet uses your global PHP installation to serve your sites.
However, if you need to support multiple PHP versions across various sites,
you may use the isolate command to specify which PHP version a particular
site should use. The isolate command configures Valet to use the specified
PHP version for the site located in your current working directory:
1cd ~/Sites/example-site
2
3valet isolate [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)
cd ~/Sites/example-site
valet isolate [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection)
If your site name does not match the name of the directory that contains it,
you may specify the site name using the --site option:
1valet isolate [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection) --site="site-name"
valet isolate [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection) --site="site-name"
For convenience, you may use the valet php, composer, and which-php
commands to proxy calls to the appropriate PHP CLI or tool based on the site's
configured PHP version:
1valet php
2valet composer
3valet which-php
valet php
valet composer
valet which-php
You may execute the isolated command to display a list of all of your
isolated sites and their PHP versions:
1valet isolated
valet isolated
To revert a site back to Valet's globally installed PHP version, you may
invoke the unisolate command from the site's root directory:
1valet unisolate
valet unisolate
Sharing Sites
Valet includes a command to share your local sites with the world, providing an easy way to test your site on mobile devices or share it with team members and clients.
Out of the box, Valet supports sharing your sites via ngrok or Expose. Before
sharing a site, you should update your Valet configuration using the share- tool command, specifying ngrok, expose, or cloudflared:
1valet share-tool ngrok
valet share-tool ngrok
If you choose a tool and don't have it installed via Homebrew (for ngrok and cloudflared) or Composer (for Expose), Valet will automatically prompt you to install it. Of course, both tools require you to authenticate your ngrok or Expose account before you can start sharing sites.
To share a site, navigate to the site's directory in your terminal and run
Valet's share command. A publicly accessible URL will be placed into your
clipboard and is ready to paste directly into your browser or to be shared
with your team:
1cd ~/Sites/laravel
2
3valet share
cd ~/Sites/laravel
valet share
To stop sharing your site, you may press Control + C.
If you're using a custom DNS server (like 1.1.1.1), ngrok sharing may not
work correctly. If this is the case on your machine, open your Mac's system
settings, go to the Network settings, open the Advanced settings, then go the
DNS tab and add 127.0.0.1 as your first DNS server.
Sharing Sites via Ngrok
Sharing your site using ngrok requires you to create an ngrok account and set up an authentication token. Once you have an authentication token, you can update your Valet configuration with that token:
1valet set-ngrok-token YOUR_TOKEN_HERE
valet set-ngrok-token YOUR_TOKEN_HERE
You may pass additional ngrok parameters to the share command, such as valet share --region=eu. For more information, consult the ngrok
documentation.
Sharing Sites via Expose
Sharing your site using Expose requires you to create an Expose account and [authenticate with Expose via your authentication token](https://expose.dev/docs/getting-started/getting-your- token).
You may consult the Expose documentation for information regarding the additional command-line parameters it supports.
Sharing Sites on Your Local Network
Valet restricts incoming traffic to the internal 127.0.0.1 interface by
default so that your development machine isn't exposed to security risks from
the Internet.
If you wish to allow other devices on your local network to access the Valet
sites on your machine via your machine's IP address (eg:
192.168.1.10/application.test), you will need to manually edit the
appropriate Nginx configuration file for that site to remove the restriction
on the listen directive. You should remove the 127.0.0.1: prefix on the
listen directive for ports 80 and 443.
If you have not run valet secure on the project, you can open up network
access for all non-HTTPS sites by editing the
/usr/local/etc/nginx/valet/valet.conf file. However, if you're serving the
project site over HTTPS (you have run valet secure for the site) then you
should edit the ~/.config/valet/Nginx/app-name.test file.
Once you have updated your Nginx configuration, run the valet restart
command to apply the configuration changes.
Site Specific Environment Variables
Some applications using other frameworks may depend on server environment
variables but do not provide a way for those variables to be configured within
your project. Valet allows you to configure site specific environment
variables by adding a .valet-env.php file within the root of your project.
This file should return an array of site / environment variable pairs which
will be added to the global $_SERVER array for each site specified in the
array:
1<?php
2
3return [
4 // Set $_SERVER['key'] to "value" for the laravel.test site...
5 'laravel' => [
6 'key' => 'value',
7 ],
8
9 // Set $_SERVER['key'] to "value" for all sites...
10 '*' => [
11 'key' => 'value',
12 ],
13];
<?php
return [
// Set $_SERVER['key'] to "value" for the laravel.test site...
'laravel' => [
'key' => 'value',
],
// Set $_SERVER['key'] to "value" for all sites...
'*' => [
'key' => 'value',
],
];
Proxying Services
Sometimes you may wish to proxy a Valet domain to another service on your local machine. For example, you may occasionally need to run Valet while also running a separate site in Docker; however, Valet and Docker can't both bind to port 80 at the same time.
To solve this, you may use the proxy command to generate a proxy. For
example, you may proxy all traffic from http://elasticsearch.test to
http://127.0.0.1:9200:
1# Proxy over HTTP...
2valet proxy elasticsearch http://127.0.0.1:9200
3
4# Proxy over TLS + HTTP/2...
5valet proxy elasticsearch http://127.0.0.1:9200 --secure
# Proxy over HTTP...
valet proxy elasticsearch http://127.0.0.1:9200
# Proxy over TLS + HTTP/2...
valet proxy elasticsearch http://127.0.0.1:9200 --secure
You may remove a proxy using the unproxy command:
1valet unproxy elasticsearch
valet unproxy elasticsearch
You may use the proxies command to list all site configurations that are
proxied:
1valet proxies
valet proxies
Custom Valet Drivers
You can write your own Valet "driver" to serve PHP applications running on a
framework or CMS that is not natively supported by Valet. When you install
Valet, a ~/.config/valet/Drivers directory is created which contains a
SampleValetDriver.php file. This file contains a sample driver
implementation to demonstrate how to write a custom driver. Writing a driver
only requires you to implement three methods: serves, isStaticFile, and
frontControllerPath.
All three methods receive the $sitePath, $siteName, and $uri values as
their arguments. The $sitePath is the fully qualified path to the site being
served on your machine, such as /Users/Lisa/Sites/my-project. The
$siteName is the "host" / "site name" portion of the domain (my-project).
The $uri is the incoming request URI (/foo/bar).
Once you have completed your custom Valet driver, place it in the
~/.config/valet/Drivers directory using the FrameworkValetDriver.php
naming convention. For example, if you are writing a custom valet driver for
WordPress, your filename should be WordPressValetDriver.php.
Let's take a look at a sample implementation of each method your custom Valet driver should implement.
The serves Method
The serves method should return true if your driver should handle the
incoming request. Otherwise, the method should return false. So, within this
method, you should attempt to determine if the given $sitePath contains a
project of the type you are trying to serve.
For example, let's imagine we are writing a WordPressValetDriver. Our
serves method might look something like this:
1/**
2 * Determine if the driver serves the request.
3 */
4public function serves(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): bool
5{
6 return is_dir($sitePath.'/wp-admin');
7}
/**
* Determine if the driver serves the request.
*/
public function serves(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): bool
{
return is_dir($sitePath.'/wp-admin');
}
The isStaticFile Method
The isStaticFile should determine if the incoming request is for a file that
is "static", such as an image or a stylesheet. If the file is static, the
method should return the fully qualified path to the static file on disk. If
the incoming request is not for a static file, the method should return
false:
1/**
2 * Determine if the incoming request is for a static file.
3 *
4 * @return string|false
5 */
6public function isStaticFile(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri)
7{
8 if (file_exists($staticFilePath = $sitePath.'/public/'.$uri)) {
9 return $staticFilePath;
10 }
11
12 return false;
13}
/**
* Determine if the incoming request is for a static file.
*
* @return string|false
*/
public function isStaticFile(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri)
{
if (file_exists($staticFilePath = $sitePath.'/public/'.$uri)) {
return $staticFilePath;
}
return false;
}
The isStaticFile method will only be called if the serves method returns
true for the incoming request and the request URI is not /.
The frontControllerPath Method
The frontControllerPath method should return the fully qualified path to
your application's "front controller", which is typically an "index.php" file
or equivalent:
1/**
2 * Get the fully resolved path to the application's front controller.
3 */
4public function frontControllerPath(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): string
5{
6 return $sitePath.'/public/index.php';
7}
/**
* Get the fully resolved path to the application's front controller.
*/
public function frontControllerPath(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): string
{
return $sitePath.'/public/index.php';
}
Local Drivers
If you would like to define a custom Valet driver for a single application,
create a LocalValetDriver.php file in the application's root directory. Your
custom driver may extend the base ValetDriver class or extend an existing
application specific driver such as the LaravelValetDriver:
1use Valet\Drivers\LaravelValetDriver;
2
3class LocalValetDriver extends LaravelValetDriver
4{
5 /**
6 * Determine if the driver serves the request.
7 */
8 public function serves(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): bool
9 {
10 return true;
11 }
12
13 /**
14 * Get the fully resolved path to the application's front controller.
15 */
16 public function frontControllerPath(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): string
17 {
18 return $sitePath.'/public_html/index.php';
19 }
20}
use Valet\Drivers\LaravelValetDriver;
class LocalValetDriver extends LaravelValetDriver
{
/**
* Determine if the driver serves the request.
*/
public function serves(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): bool
{
return true;
}
/**
* Get the fully resolved path to the application's front controller.
*/
public function frontControllerPath(string $sitePath, string $siteName, string $uri): string
{
return $sitePath.'/public_html/index.php';
}
}
Other Valet Commands
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
valet list |
Display a list of all Valet commands. |
valet diagnose |
Output diagnostics to aid in debugging Valet. |
valet directory-listing |
Determine directory-listing behavior. Default is "off", which renders a 404 page for directories. |
valet forget |
Run this command from a "parked" directory to remove it from the parked directory list. |
valet log |
View a list of logs which are written by Valet's services. |
valet paths |
View all of your "parked" paths. |
valet restart |
Restart the Valet daemons. |
valet start |
Start the Valet daemons. |
valet stop |
Stop the Valet daemons. |
valet trust |
Add sudoers files for Brew and Valet to allow Valet commands to be run without prompting for your password. |
valet uninstall |
Uninstall Valet: shows instructions for manual uninstall. Pass the --force option to aggressively delete all of Valet's resources. |
Valet Directories and Files
You may find the following directory and file information helpful while troubleshooting issues with your Valet environment:
~/.config/valet
Contains all of Valet's configuration. You may wish to maintain a backup of this directory.
~/.config/valet/dnsmasq.d/
This directory contains DNSMasq's configuration.
~/.config/valet/Drivers/
This directory contains Valet's drivers. Drivers determine how a particular framework / CMS is served.
~/.config/valet/Nginx/
This directory contains all of Valet's Nginx site configurations. These files
are rebuilt when running the install and secure commands.
~/.config/valet/Sites/
This directory contains all of the symbolic links for your linked projects.
~/.config/valet/config.json
This file is Valet's master configuration file.
~/.config/valet/valet.sock
This file is the PHP-FPM socket used by Valet's Nginx installation. This will only exist if PHP is running properly.
~/.config/valet/Log/fpm-php.www.log
This file is the user log for PHP errors.
~/.config/valet/Log/nginx-error.log
This file is the user log for Nginx errors.
/usr/local/var/log/php-fpm.log
This file is the system log for PHP-FPM errors.
/usr/local/var/log/nginx
This directory contains the Nginx access and error logs.
/usr/local/etc/php/X.X/conf.d
This directory contains the *.ini files for various PHP configuration
settings.
/usr/local/etc/php/X.X/php-fpm.d/valet-fpm.conf
This file is the PHP-FPM pool configuration file.
~/.composer/vendor/laravel/valet/cli/stubs/secure.valet.conf
This file is the default Nginx configuration used for building SSL certificates for your sites.
Disk Access
Since macOS 10.14, [access to some files and directories is restricted by default](https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1902/en_US/apple- platform-security-guide.pdf). These restrictions include the Desktop, Documents, and Downloads directories. In addition, network volume and removable volume access is restricted. Therefore, Valet recommends your site folders are located outside of these protected locations.
However, if you wish to serve sites from within one of those locations, you
will need to give Nginx "Full Disk Access". Otherwise, you may encounter
server errors or other unpredictable behavior from Nginx, especially when
serving static assets. Typically, macOS will automatically prompt you to grant
Nginx full access to these locations. Or, you may do so manually via System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy and selecting Full Disk Access. Next, enable any nginx entries in the main window pane.