php artisan: "failed to open stream: No such file or directory"

Question

I just started to learn php/laravel by following some guides and tutorials, which led me to run a server using php artisan serve command.

The steps I took are as follows:

1. install laravel using composer and adding it to $PATH.
   
2. creating a project by using laravel new new-blog
   
3. changing directory into the project foler and running php artisan serve command.
   

However, instead of the expected output of a php server with an address I get this error:

PHP Warning:  require(/home/sflash/Documents/php/laravel/new-blog/vendor/autoload.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/sflash/Documents/php/laravel/new-blog/artisan on line 18
PHP Fatal error:  require(): Failed opening required '/home/sflash/Documents/php/laravel/new-blog/vendor/autoload.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/php') in /home/sflash/Documents/php/laravel/new-blog/artisan on line 18

I am on a linux machine (debian buster). The structure of my project folder is like below:

app        composer.json  package.json  README.md  server.php  webpack.mix.js
artisan    config         phpunit.xml   resources  storage
bootstrap  database       public        routes     tests

As the error code above states, I don't have a file called vendor/autoload.php. How does this occur/how to fix this?

Answer 1

You have done everything correctly except you forget to add the vendor folder into your project directory, just try

 composer i 

Inside the project directory from the terminal, will solve your error. And if you get any other error then remove the composer.lock file and then try again.

UPDATE:

Instead of deleting the composer.lock file when facing issues like PHP version mismatch or dependency version locked just use

composer update

Answer 2

This is caused because you're missing your "Vendor" directory which is causing a missing dependency error. To fix this you need to run:

Composer update

In most cases, updating the Composer will regenerate the vendor folder and the autoload.php file.

Alternatively, you can regenerate the autoload.php file using the command,

composer dump-autoload

If the Composer is found corrupted, uninstall the existing one and reinstall it. To install Composer, run this command in the root project folder:

Composer install