Forem: Stephen Jude

How To Set Up Auto Deploy For Laravel Applications On Cpanel

Stephen Jude — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 07:27:00 +0000

In this post, I will show you how to set up auto for your Laravel application on Cpanel. I want to assume you already have your Laravel app deployed on CPanel, and your version control provider(Github, Gitlab, or Bitbucket) connected to the Cpanel server. If you haven't, please check out my previous posts below:

Run Composer & PHP Commands On Cpanel Terminal Using Any PHP CLI Version Installed — CentOS & CloudLinux
How To Connect Cpanel To Github, Gitlab, And Bitbucket And Deploy Private Repositories
How To Deploy A Laravel Project On Linux Shared Hosting In 5 Minutes

Setup Deployment Script

We need to create a deploy.sh bash script inside the public_html directory of our CPanel and paste the code snippet below.



#!/bin/sh

# Change to the project directory. 
cd ~/path/to/project

# Pull the latest changes from the git repository
git pull origin main

# Install/update composer dependencies
composer install --no-interaction

# Run database migrations
php artisan migrate --force

# Clear caches
php artisan cache:clear

# Clear and cache routes
php artisan route:cache

# Clear and cache config
php artisan config:cache

# Clear and cache views
php artisan view:cache

The code snippet above when executed, will then change to the project directory and pull the latest changes, install composer dependencies, and other necessary artisan commands for our Laravel application.

Let's make the deploy.sh bash script executable by running the command below on our CPanel terminal.



chmod +x ~/public_html/deploy.sh

We can manually change the bash script file permission using CPanel file permission dialog.

Setup Cpanel Webhook

Create a Cpanel subdomain like this: webhook.yourdomain.com or whatever works for you.
Create an index.php file inside the subdomain directory ~/public_html/webhook.yourdomain.com and paste the code snippet below:



<?php
// Execute deploy script
$output = shell_exec('. ~/public_html/deploy.sh');

// Send back execution output to the webhook originator.
echo $output; 

// Return OK response
header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");

This PHP script will execute our bash script, echo the output, and return 200 HTTP responses. You can test this by making an HTTP request to this subdomain using any HTTP client of your choice.

If your subdomain is returning error 500, create a .htaccess file inside the subdomain root directory and paste the code snippet below:



<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

    RewriteEngine On

</IfModule>

Github, Gitlab & Bitbucket Setup

Navigate to the webhook settings of your repository and add your cpanel webhook URL(https://webhook.yourdomain.com/) for push events. You can test this out by adding a commit to your code repository.

Bonus:

If you are using Github, you can check your webhook logs under Recent Deliveries tab in your repository webhook settings. You will see a log of all the webhook requests that have been sent to your Cpanel server. The same applies to Bitbucket but not Gitlab.

How To Setup A Custom Artisan Command And Calculate The Execution Time

Stephen Jude — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 21:01:02 +0000

The CLI( Command Line Interface) is one of the best places to execute a long long-running task and Laravel has provided us with the Artisan Console that allows us to create our custom commands. I usually set up custom artisan commands whenever I am building something that requires initial setup or when I want to run queries on a large DB.

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to set up a custom Artisan command and how to calculate the execution time of that command.

There are two ways to create a custom Artisan Console command, the Class-Based Command and the Closure Based Command.

The class base command will require us to set up a class for our artisan command (this class can be generated with the Artisan make:command). These custom command classes reside in the app/Console/Commands directory of your Laravel application.

The Closure-Based Command resides inside the routes/console.php files in your Laravel application.

For this tutorial, we will use the Closure Based Command.

Creating Custom Command

//routes/console.php
use App\Http\Controllers\UserController; 
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Artisan;

Artisan::command('send:emails', function(){
  $this->comment('Processing');
  app(UserController::class)->sendEmails();
  $this->comment('Processed');
});

This is a closure based commands that send out emails. Add this to the console.php file in the routes directory of your laravel application.

Now we can run artisan send:email.

php artisan send:emails

Custom Commands With Arguments

Something you might need to accept CLI arguments for your custom command. This is very simple with Laravel. The same way we define route arguments is how we do it for a custom command.

Artisan::command('send:emails {type} {delay}', function($type, $delay){
  $this->comment('Processing');
  app(UserController::class)->sendEmails($type, $delay);
  $this->comment('Processed');
});

The arguments are enclosed with curly brackets and passed to the closure by type-hinting as the closure function parameters.

Running the command will now require we pass the email $type and the also a $delay .

php artisan send:emails active 10

Calculating Execution Time

To calculate the execution time of a custom command we can leverage the Laravel now() helper method. The now() helper returns an instance of Carbon, now we can leverage the diffInSeconds() or diffInMinutes() methods depending on what you want to return.

First, we have to define the start time and calculate the difference between the start and end time of the execution.

//routes/console.php
use App\Http\Controllers\UserController; 
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Artisan;

Artisan::command('send:emails', function(){
  $start = now();
  $this->comment('Processing');
  app(UserController::class)->sendEmails();
  $time = $start->diffInSeconds(now());
  $this->comment("Processed in $time seconds");
});

Here is a sample output.

Now you know about the custom artisan command, you can now move your initial setup actions or long-running tasks that are in your Laravel applications to the console.

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Laravel Lessons: Getting Started

Stephen Jude — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 19:44:16 +0000

This article was initially sent as a mail. I had to publish it so that others who didn’t subscribe to the blog series mailing list can follow along.

Hi!

First, my name is Stephen Jude and I have been a PHP/Laravel developer for three(3) years now.

The first thing you have to know is that Laravel is a PHP framework. So everything we are going to be talking about is going to be revolving around PHP(don’t worry, you will be fine).

Now let me walk you through what you are going to need for this series.

Development Environment

If you have been a PHP developer, you already know about XAMPP, WAMP, LAMP and MAMP. But there is more to setting up a Laravel development environment. Laravel is made up of PHP packages(lots of them) which requires a lot of PHP extensions that also requires lots of configurations. The good news is that all these configurations have been taken care of.

If you are using Windows like me, just install Laragon. Laragon is a fast and easy way to create an isolated dev environment on Windows. Includes Mysql, PHP Memcached, Redis, Apache and Nginx.

For Linux or Mac, I recommend Laravel Homestead, an official pre-packaged Vagrant box that provides you with a wonderful development environment without requiring you to install PHP, a web server, and any other server software on your local machine.

After trying Laravel Valet on my new Mac Book, I will like to recommend it. It’s quite cool.

PHPSANDBOX.io

If you are not ready to set up anything on your local machine, PHPSandboxis an option for you. Its a playground for PHP and Laravel developer. Just login with your GitHub account and you are good to go. I will be sharing some of my code from there. Thanks to @Bosunki and his team for this awesome project.

Basic OOP Concept In PHP

An understanding of Object-Oriented Programming in PHP is a big plus for this Laravel series. Forget about the jargon you will see on google about OOP. Just know you will be dealing with classes instead of the traditional functions you are already used to.

Check out w3school OOP PHP tutorial. If you are a visual learner, check out this crash course by Traversy Media.

Road Map

Here are the things we are going to be covering in this series:

Questions

I know you have lots of questions about Laravel. Feel free to send me a DM on twitter( @stephenjudeso ) or send a mail via hello@stephenjude.me

Getting Started With PHPSandbox.io — An Online Code Sandbox For PHP

Stephen Jude — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 16:40:12 +0000

Getting Started With PHPSandbox.io — An Online Code Sandbox For PHP

Last week I sent out a getting started mail to everyone following my Laravel series for beginners. I mentioned PHPSandbox.io for those who don’t want to setup a local development environment.

So whats this PHPSandbox all about?

PHPSandbox

PHPSandbox is basically a play ground for PHP developers. It has lots of handy features. Its a place where you can try out code snippets, PHP packages. Its the coolest way to share PHP code snippets and you can run it from anywhere its embedded.

PHPSandbox is an online Code Sandbox made for PHP.

With PHPSandbox you can create a PHP CLI app, PHP web app or Laravel app.

In this article we are going to be focusing on creating a Laravel application with PHPSandbox.

Let me show you!

Embedded code using PHPSandbox

That’s me trying out Zttp, a handy PHP package by Adam Wathan.

How To Create A PHP/Laravel Notebook

Every of your code snippets on PHPSandbox is saved as a notebook for you. To get started, go to PHPSandbox.io and launch your own notebook. Make sure you signup with your GitHub account so your notebook won’t get lost.

Laravel Notebook

PHPSandbox supports Laravel. This feature according to Bosunski, is still in development but its very cool. You can now run a full-fledged Laravel application without setting up a local development environment. Hurray!

Laravel in PHPSandbox

I know you already have lots of questions about requiring PHP/Laravel packages, creating .env files and running artisan commands. I saw it coming :)

PHP/Laravel Packages

You can require PHP/Laravel packages. Doing this is very simple with PHPSandbox and there is no need for composer install, everything is all worked out for you.

Laravel DotEnv File

You can edit your .env file variables via PHPSandbox UI.

PHP Artisan Commands

Running Laravel artisan commands is done via PHPSandbox UI

Import Laravel Projects From GitHub

I think this is the sweetest part of PHPSandbox. You can import your Laravel project from GitHub and continue working on them on the from here. This is cool :)

Currently you can only import a Laravel project.

Conclusion

Lots of features are still in beta and more are still coming to PHPSandbox. If you are following my Laravel series and you are having a hard time setting up a local development environment, maybe you should give PHPSandbox a trial.

Special thanks to Bosunskiand his team for all the works and effort they have been putting into this project. THANK GUYS!

How To Deploy A Laravel Project On Linux Shared Hosting In 5 Minutes

Stephen Jude — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 23:14:07 +0000

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

In my 2019 review I mentioned that I was working on a side project which is setting up a shared hosting platform with Laraveldevelopers in mind.

I have deployed lots of Laravel projects on Linux shared hosting and I know how painful it is especially when there is no ssh access.

Litehost is here to solve that problem. It has ssh access on all its hosting plans and it has Composer, Git & PHP CLI pre-installed on its servers. Finally it pretty affordable, just ₦400/month ($1.11). Isn’t that amazing? Litehost is live and its been accepting customer since 24th December 2019.

Just yesterday I moved my blog which I built with Laravel to Litehost server. So I am going to show you how I did it in 5 minutes.

Lets get to the main thing. I will assume you have already a Cpanel account with ssh access on it.

Project Setup

Push your Laravel project to a remote git repository. I already have my blog’s repository on GitHub and its open source.

Now lets go back to our Cpanel. If you have ssh access on your hosting plan, look for terminal under the advanced tab and click on it.

Move into your public directory and pull your Laravel project from your remote repository.

cd public\_html

git clone [https://github.com/stephenjude/stephenjude.tech.git](https://github.com/stephenjude/stephenjude.tech.git) blog

With this command you now have your project inside public_html/blog folder.

Make a copy of your .env.example file and update your .env variables. You can do this using the CPanel file manager. Remember that Show Hidden Files (dotfiles) must be enabled from the CPanel file manager settings.

Now enter into the project folder and pull all the required dependencies.

cd blog

composer install

Fine, now we have our Laravel project ready to be served but its remaining one more thing. Laravel makes use of the storage folder for lots of things like writing logs, caching views and local file storage for uploads.

chmod 777 storage

I know this is not advisable but we are not on a VPS. We are on a shared server with some some limits to what we can do. Yeah.

Finally you have to setup your ** .htaccess** file to point to your Laravel public folder. You can find this .htaccess file inside the public_html folder. if its not there then create one and update it with the code below.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST\_URI} !^blog/public
RewriteRule ^(.\*)$ /blog/public/$1 [L]

That’s it, you have successfully deployed your Laravel project.

Conclusion

I know this not the best way to deploy a Laravel project but I believe it’s efficient enough to get your project up and running on a Linux shared hosting.

I am still working on setting up shared hosting plans tailored for Laravel developers. The idea is to save time and deploy faster on shared hosting.

Join my weekly newsletter and never miss out on new tutorials, tips and more.

You can also follow me on twitter @stephenjudeso

Using Multiple Instances of Redis For Your Laravel Application

Stephen Jude — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 02:25:58 +0000

I worked as a Laravel backend developer atQwickpage for a year. Qwickpage has lots of products that are still in their development stage but its is primarily a social network for entrepreneurs.

While at Qwickpage we have two instances of the core application running on the server. One is for development while the other is served live (production).

We make use of Redisas our caching system for the two instances of the app and the end result was a conflict.

The two applications (dev & live) were using the same instance of Redis on the server, each one keeps overriding the cached data of the other and returning wrong cached data.

How Did We Fix This

We fixed this by creating another instance of Redis that runs on port 6380. So the live app takes port 6379 while dev app takes 6380; We now have two instances of Redis running on our server.

In this post, I will show you how you can create another instance of Redis on your Linux server. I will assume your already have Redis installed on your Linux server.

Now Lets Go!

To create another instance of Redis we need to duplicate the existing Redis configuration file:

cp /etc/redis/redis\_6379.conf /etc/redis/redis\_6380.conf

Update port 6380 config file (etc/redis/redis_6380.conf) like this:

pidfile /var/run/redis\_6380.pid
port 6380
logfile /var/log/redis/redis\_6380.log
dir /var/lib/redis/6380

Create a port 6380 working directory:

mkdir /var/lib/redis/6380

Update port 6379 (/etc/init.d/redis_6379) service script from this:

EXEC=/usr/local/bin/redis-server
CLIEXEC=/usr/local/bin/redis-cli
PIDFILE=/var/run/redis\_6379.pid
CONF="/etc/redis/6379.conf"
REDISPORT="6379"

to this:

NAME=`basename ${0}`
EXEC=/usr/local/bin/redis-server
CLIEXEC=/usr/local/bin/redis-cli
PIDFILE=/var/run/${NAME}.pid
CONF="/etc/redis/${NAME}.conf"
REDISPORT="${NAME#\*\_}"

Create a symlink script for port 6380 instance

ln -s /etc/init.d/redis\_6379 /etc/init.d/redis\_6380

To start the two Redis server instances run this:

/etc/init.d/redis\_6379 start
/etc/init.d/redis\_6380 start

You can now update the dotenv files of your two applications and assign them different Redis port respectively.

Cheers!

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You can also follow me on twitter @stephenjudeso

Upgrading To PHP 7.4 (Laragon)

Stephen Jude — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 20:39:40 +0000

Its no longer news that PHP 7.4 is now available with lots of exciting new features. Yeah, and everyone wants to get a test of it :)

PHP 7.4 comes with numerous improvements and new features such as: Typed Properties, Arrow Functions, Null coalescing assignment operator, Unpacking Inside Arrays, Opcache Preloading etc.

You can walk your self through this new features here. Thanks to PHP development team. Bravo!

Laragon

Laragon is a modern, maintained and rich-featured local development environment. Laragon comes pre-installed with many popular applications like Node.js, PHP, Apache, Nginx, Redis, Composer, and MariaDB/MySQL. It’s currently available for only Windows OS. You can download it here.

Please note that Laragon’s latest release as at the time I wrote this article haven’t shipped with PHP 7.4 and that’s the essence of this article.

Upgrading to PHP 7.4

First lets download PHP 7.4 for Windows. Here is a direct link for 64 bits and 32 bits. Extract the downloaded zip file to Laragon’s PHP folder.

Note that Laragon’s PHP folder can be found on this path:

C:\laragon\bin\php

Now open Laragon app on your system, click on Menu, navigate to the menu item, then change the PHP version to the latest one you have on your system.

Now you have your local development environment running PHP 7.4!

Cheers !

Join my weekly newsletter and never miss out on news, tutorials, tips and more.

You can also follow me on twitter @stephenjudeso

Getting Started With Laravel Lite Blog

Stephen Jude — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 19:02:48 +0000

In my previous post, I mentioned how I built Lite Blog. In this post I will be detailing how to get started and some of the interesting features of Lite Blog.

Installation

Installing Lite Blog is pretty simple. Its just like installing a Laravel application using composer.

composer create-project --prefer-dist stephenjude/lite-blog myblog

After the installation, create your database and update .env file with your database credentials. After that run the setup command inside the project directory.

cd myblog

php artisan setup:blog

This will publish the public assets for the publishing platform (wink) and generate a login credentials for you.

Visit myblog.test on your local machine to see your homepage.

To create post visit myblog.test/editor and login with the generated credentials.

Site Configs

Here we are going to set the site configuration for our blog. The site configs are inside the config/services.php file.

'meta' =\> [
 'site\_name' =\> 'My Perosnal Blog',
 'mantra' =\> 'Web & Mobile Developer', 
],

The site_name is the title of the blog while the mantra is what the site stands for usually under the title of the blog. Update them to fit your taste.

Social Profile Links

Inside config/services.php add your social media profile links.

'social' =\> [
 'linkedin' =\> 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/username/',
 'email' =\> 'mailto:mail@gmail.com',
 'medium' =\> 'https://medium.com/@username',
 'github' =\> 'https://github.com/username',
 'twitter' =\> 'https://twitter.com/username',
 'atom' =\> '#',
 ],

Unsplash Integration

When creating post you might like to make use of free professional photos. Wink comes with Unsplash integration out of the box so head over to Unspash,create a new Unsplash app. Grab the ‘Access Key’ and add it to your .env file as UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY

Compiling assets (Optional)

In case you want to recompile the javascript. You have to install the nodejs packages and then run dev, just like you do in your Laravel application.

npm install

npm run dev

SEO — Search Engine Optimizations

The Laravel publishing platform I used on this project (wink) made a very nice provision for SEO. It was designed that every post you publish has fields where you can add your post’s SEO data. I have implemented this on the resources/views/post.blade.php.

For the SEO image, I made use of post featured image. So automatically your featured image will appear as you share the post on twitter, facebook or any other social network sites.

I also used post tags as SEO keywords so adding tags to your post is a plus.

Conclusion

Lite Blog is a Laravel application and its highly flexible for modification. You can find the project on github and its open for contributions.

Forem: Stephen Jude

How To Set Up Auto Deploy For Laravel Applications On Cpanel

Setup Deployment Script

Setup Cpanel Webhook

Github, Gitlab & Bitbucket Setup

Bonus:

How To Setup A Custom Artisan Command And Calculate The Execution Time

Creating Custom Command

Custom Commands With Arguments

Calculating Execution Time

Laravel Lessons: Getting Started

Development Environment

PHPSANDBOX.io

Basic OOP Concept In PHP

Road Map​

​Questions

Getting Started With PHPSandbox.io — An Online Code Sandbox For PHP

Getting Started With PHPSandbox.io — An Online Code Sandbox For PHP

PHPSandbox

Let me show you!

How To Create A PHP/Laravel Notebook

Laravel Notebook

PHP/Laravel Packages

Laravel DotEnv File

PHP Artisan Commands

Import Laravel Projects From GitHub

Conclusion

How To Deploy A Laravel Project On Linux Shared Hosting In 5 Minutes

Project Setup

Conclusion

Using Multiple Instances of Redis For Your Laravel Application

How Did We Fix This

Now Lets Go!

Cheers!

Upgrading To PHP 7.4 (Laragon)

Laragon

Upgrading to PHP 7.4

Cheers !

Getting Started With Laravel Lite Blog

Installation

Site Configs

Social Profile Links

Unsplash Integration

Compiling assets (Optional)

SEO — Search Engine Optimizations

Conclusion

Road Map

Questions