Laravel quick start guide route not working

Question

Ok I'm new to Laravel so went straight to the documentation to get started. There are massive holes in the documentation so it took a lot of effort and googling to fill the gaps in order to get Laravel set-up. I now have it set up and moved on to the next step in the quick start guide.I created my route

Route::get('users', function() {      return 'Users!'; }); 

Now it says:

Now, if you hit the /users route in your web browser, you should see Users! 

So I hit up:

http://localhost/laravel/users  

but get a 404? I tried

http://localhost/laravel/public/users  

but still a 404? I followed the steps on the quick start guide to the letter, what am I missing?

Answer 1

Seems like your Laravel app is accesible via an Apache HTTP alias, because your URL looks like: http://localhost/laravel/. If this is the case and assuming that http://localhost/laravel is pointing to your public directory, then follow these steps:

1. Try to navigate to your expected route prepend it with /index.php/, in your case: http://localhost/laravel/index.php/users. If it works (no 404) then you problem is with the Rewrite Module configuration of Apache HTTP, you should follow the next steps.
2. Edit the file public/.htaccess.
3. Under the line RewriteEngine On add RewriteBase /laravel/.
4. Try to navigate to an existing route.

Basically, if you app resides in a alias or virtual directory (say http://localhost/alias) you should add an entry in your rewrite rule to rewrite the base directory with alias.