Is Xampp required for laravel? - php

Question

I am new to PHP and Laravel.
I installed Laravel and Composer , created new project and it is working fine.
Now when i tried to migrate a database using this command php artisan migrate i got errors, i wonder is it something related to not installing Xampp ? i am running Mac OS
The errors i got is
1 PDOException::("SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused")
/app/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/Connector.php:68
2 PDO::__construct("mysql:host=127.0.0.1;port=3306;dbname=app", "root", "", [])
/app/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/Connector.php:68

Answer 1

Xampp has nothing to do with Laravel itself. Xampp is a set of tools that is usually used together to deliver websites. Xampp just makes it easier (supposedly) to install those set for you. Rather than having to install and setup all yourself.
Today people tend to avoid such sets in favour for tools like Vagrant or Docker.
Laravel even provides its own Vagrant setup called Homestead.
See ie. in Laravel 5.5 docs: https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/homestead
If you don't want to use Homestead but build your own server environment there's also tools to make this easier for you.
For example there is http://www.puphpet.com for PHP + Vagrant and https://phpdocker.io/ for PHP + Docker.

Answer 2

Xampp is not required but a php server like apache or nginx is required also in order to use mysql you should have mysql installed you get this error
PDOException::("SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused")
/app/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/Connector.php:68
because the mysql service is turned off so I think you open Xampp control Panel and you start mysql in order for it to work and this is why you have asked if Xampp is required am I right !!!
Actually to prove that Xampp has nothing to do with Laravel you can start the mysql server from command line I will give you example in windows OS.
if you have xampp installed on C:/ Driver lets say then try cd(change directory) into this path in your command line
cd c:/xampp/mysql/bin
start mysqld.exe // this will start the mysql service for you
now you can navigate to your Laravel app and try to migrate this time you won't get connection refused error and that is because you have started the Mysql server from command line.
I think this proves that Xampp has nothing to do with Laravel.
Hope this was helpful, good luck.

Answer 3

Mac OS comes with PHP built into it. You should be able to use php -v to see what version. Use php -S localhost:xxxx to output the local directory to a local address.
For example, to run laravel locally, open the terminal cmd+spacebar, type terminal, open it, then use change to the path where your laravel project is.
Type php -S localhost:3000 and it should give you a confirmation in the terminal. Now open a browser and go to localhost:3000 and it should show your project.