"Please provide a valid cache path" error in laravel

Question

Try the following:

create these folders under storage/framework:

• sessions
• views
• cache

Now it should work

Try this:

1. php artisan cache:clear
2. php artisan config:clear
3. php artisan view:clear

So apparently what happened was when I was duplicating my project the framework folder inside my storage folder was not copied to the new directory, this cause my error.

The cause of this error can be traced from Illuminate\View\Compilers\Compiler.php

public function __construct(Filesystem $files, $cachePath)
{
    if (! $cachePath) {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('Please provide a valid cache path.');
    }

    $this->files = $files;
    $this->cachePath = $cachePath;
}

The constructor is invoked by BladeCompiler in Illuminate\View\ViewServiceProvider

/**
 * Register the Blade engine implementation.
 *
 * @param  \Illuminate\View\Engines\EngineResolver  $resolver
 * @return void
 */
public function registerBladeEngine($resolver)
{
    // The Compiler engine requires an instance of the CompilerInterface, which in
    // this case will be the Blade compiler, so we'll first create the compiler
    // instance to pass into the engine so it can compile the views properly.
    $this->app->singleton('blade.compiler', function () {
        return new BladeCompiler(
            $this->app['files'], $this->app['config']['view.compiled']
        );
    });

    $resolver->register('blade', function () {
        return new CompilerEngine($this->app['blade.compiler']);
    });
}

So, tracing back further, the following code:

$this->app['config']['view.compiled']

is generally located in your /config/view.php, if you use the standard laravel structure.

<?php
return [
    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | View Storage Paths
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | Most templating systems load templates from disk. Here you may specify
    | an array of paths that should be checked for your views. Of course
    | the usual Laravel view path has already been registered for you.
    |
    */
    'paths' => [
        resource_path('views'),
    ],
    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Compiled View Path
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | This option determines where all the compiled Blade templates will be
    | stored for your application. Typically, this is within the storage
    | directory. However, as usual, you are free to change this value.
    |
    */
    'compiled' => realpath(storage_path('framework/views')),
];

realpath(...) returns false, if the path does not exist. Thus, invoking

'Please provide a valid cache path.' error.

Therefore, to get rid of this error, what you can do is to ensure that

storage_path('framework/views')

or

/storage/framework/views

exists :)

Ensure the below folders in storage directory:

• logs
• framework
• framework/cache
• framework/cache/data
• framework/sessions
• framework/testing
• framework/views

Below is a command-line snippet that does for you

cd storage
mkdir logs
mkdir framework
mkdir framework/cache && framework/cache/data
mkdir framework/sessions
mkdir framework/testing
mkdir framework/views
chgrp -R www-data ../storage
chown -R www-data ../storage