Introduction
The default Laravel application structure is intended to provide a great starting point for both large and small applications. Of course, you are free to organize your application however you like. Laravel imposes almost no restrictions on where any given class is located - as long as Composer can autoload the class.
The Root Directory
The root directory of a fresh Laravel installation contains a variety of folders:
The app directory, as you might expect,
contains the core code of your application. We'll
explore this folder in more detail soon.
The bootstrap folder contains a few files
that bootstrap the framework and configure autoloading,
as well as a cache folder that contains a
few framework generated files for bootstrap performance
optimization.
The config directory, as the name implies,
contains all of your application's configuration
files.
The database folder contains your database
migration and seeds. If you wish, you may also use this
folder to hold an SQLite database.
The public directory contains the front
controller and your assets (images, JavaScript, CSS,
etc.).
The resources directory contains your views,
raw assets (LESS, SASS, CoffeeScript), and localization
files.
The storage directory contains compiled
Blade templates, file based sessions, file caches, and
other files generated by the framework. This folder is
segregated into app,
framework, and logs
directories. The app directory may be used
to store any files utilized by your application. The
framework directory is used to store
framework generated files and caches. Finally, the
logs directory contains your application's
log files.
The tests directory contains your automated
tests. An example PHPUnit is provided
out of the box.
The vendor directory contains your Composer
dependencies.
The App Directory
The "meat" of your application lives in the
app directory. By default, this directory
is namespaced under App and is autoloaded
by Composer using the PSR-4
autoloading standard. You may change
this namespace using the app:name
Artisan command.
The app directory ships with a variety of
additional directories such as Console,
Http, and Providers. Think of
the Console and Http
directories as providing an API into the
"core" of your application. The HTTP protocol
and CLI are both mechanisms to interact with your
application, but do not actually contain application
logic. In other words, they are simply two ways of
issuing commands to your application. The
Console directory contains all of your
Artisan commands, while the Http directory
contains your controllers, middleware, and requests.
The Jobs directory, of course, houses the queueable jobs for your
application. Jobs may be queued by your application, as
well as be run synchronously within the current request
lifecycle.
The Events directory, as you might expect,
houses event classes. Events
may be used to alert other parts of your application
that a given action has occurred, providing a great deal
of flexibility and decoupling.
The Listeners directory contains the handler
classes for your events. Handlers receive an event and
perform logic in response to the event being fired. For
example, a UserRegistered event might be
handled by a SendWelcomeEmail listener.
The Exceptions directory contains your
application's exception handler and is also a good place
to stick any exceptions thrown by your application.
Note: Many of the classes in the
appdirectory can be generated by Artisan via commands. To review the available commands, run thephp artisan list makecommand in your terminal.
Namespacing Your Application
As discussed above, the default application namespace is
App; however, you may change this namespace
to match the name of your application, which is easily
done via the app:name Artisan command. For
example, if your application is named
"SocialNet", you would run the following
command:
php artisan app:name SocialNet
Of course, you are free to simply use the
App namespace.