Project Structure

Project Structure

When you create a Laravel project, you get a well-organized directory structure. Let's break down each folder so you know exactly where things go.

Think of this as your roadmap — knowing the structure saves you hours of confusion later.

The app/ Directory

This is where your application logic lives. Models, controllers, middleware, services — all go here. The app/ directory follows PSR-4 autoloading, meaning the namespace matches the directory structure.

app/
├── Console/
├── Exceptions/
├── Http/
│   ├── Controllers/
│   ├── Middleware/
│   └── Kernel.php
├── Models/
├── Providers/
└── User.php

Your Models/ folder contains Eloquent models, Http/Controllers/ holds your controllers, and Providers/ manages service bindings.

Key Configuration Directories

The config/ directory contains all your configuration files as plain PHP arrays. Each file handles a specific concern — database, cache, sessions, mail, and more. You rarely need to modify these directly, but it's good to know they're there.

config/
├── app.php
├── auth.php
├── database.php
├── cache.php
├── session.php
└── mail.php

The database/ directory holds your migrations, seeders, and factories. The public/ directory is your web root — it contains index.php, which is the entry point for all requests.

resources/ and routes/

The resources/ directory stores your views, raw CSS, JavaScript, and language files. Blade templates go in resources/views/.

The routes/ directory is where you define all your application's routes. Laravel organizes them into separate files by type:

routes/
├── web.php
├── api.php
├── console.php
└── channels.php

The web.php file defines routes for your web interface, while api.php handles API endpoints. The artisan file at the project root is Laravel's command-line interface tool.