laravel-in-subdirectory.md

How to install Laravel in a subfolder/subdirectory of a document root (on Apache)

Although some will advise against this, it is possible to install Laravel in a non-rootfolder, but not out-of-the-box. There are many other ways to do this, but I think this one is the easiest.

This tutorial assumes you have a website, lets call it example.com and subfolder named subfolder with your Laravel-application. The goal is to have a working Laravel-app when visiting example.com/subfolder.

1. In your .env, add:

   ASSET_URL=/subfolder

   This will fix the asset-paths for your images, CSS- and JS-files.

2. This may sound a little contradictory, but you have to set APP_URL=https://example.com/subfolder including the /subfolder as well.

3. We will use this variable in order the fix the routing, in your app/Providers/RouteServiceProvider.php add config('app.asset_url') to the route-prefixes.

   So change this:

   public function boot()
   {
       $this->configureRateLimiting();
   
       $this->routes(function () {
           Route::prefix('api')
               ->middleware('api')
               ->namespace($this->namespace)
               ->group(base_path('routes/api.php'));
   
           Route::middleware('web')
               ->namespace($this->namespace)
               ->group(base_path('routes/web.php'));
       });
   }
   

   into:

   public function boot()
   {
       $this->configureRateLimiting();
   
       $this->routes(function () {
           Route::prefix(config('app.asset_url') . '/api')
               ->middleware('api')
               ->namespace($this->namespace)
               ->group(base_path('routes/api.php'));
   
           Route::prefix(config('app.asset_url') . '/')
               ->middleware('web')
               ->namespace($this->namespace)
               ->group(base_path('routes/web.php'));
       });
   }
   

   This won't hurt if you don't specify an ASSET_URL in your .env (for you local dev-environment for example).

4. Finally the tricky part and the main reason for the advises against this workaround: in order to show the Laravel-app you need to point to the /public-folder. This can be done with a .htaccess in the root of your Laravel-project (so in /subfolder):

   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteRule (.*) public/$1 [L]
    </IfModule>
   

I hope you found this helpfull, if you have any questions or suggestions: please let me know!