laravel 4 does not work on Windows XAMPP

Question

On Windows 7 cmd I have run composer create-project laravel/laravel blog --prefer-dist from `C:\xampp\htdocs\lara. Everything is downloaded and installed fine.

However, when I try to access http://localhost/lara/blog it shows the directory listing of apache. I followed the instruction in the documentation during the installation.

I noticed the following notes:

1. C:\xampp\htdocs\lara\blog does not has any index.php or .htaccess
2. C:\xampp\htdocs\lara\blog\app also, does not has any index.php or .htaccess
3. Only accessing http://localhost/lara/blog/public opens a page with the laravel logo and the words "You have arrived"

I could not able to know what's the problem?

Answer 1

Laravel's folder structure uses the public folder as the WWW root, effectively placing all your application's files outside of the web root to help keep them secure. What you are experiencing is normal.

You'll have to either access your application from the http://localhost/lara/blog/public URL, or set up a virtual host URL (e.g. http://testblog.dev) that is pointed to the public folder. I do not develop on Windows/XAMPP so I cannot specifically tell you how to do that part.

Answer 2

If you're running php > 5.4 you can serve the app using the builtin server from command prompt as well (for development purposes):

php artisan serve