First Steps after installing Laravel

laravel-setup.txt

As soon as you create a new Laravel project, it will default itself to be in production mode (so that stack traces don't show up) and still needs you to put in $ENV placeholders for the database login credentials. Since we NEVER commit passwords or API keys to github, we need to use $ENV as a placeholder and then create .env.local.php in order to store the actual values. Your .env.local.php file is automatically ignored by git, so this is where you put your credentials.

In bootstrap/start.php on line 27, change to the following:
$env = $app->detectEnvironment(function() {
return isset($_SERVER['LARAVEL_ENV']) ? $_SERVER['LARAVEL_ENV'] : 'production';
});

Delete app/config/local/database.php file.

Edit app/config/database.php in the following way:
replace these lines:
'host' => 'localhost',
'database' => 'forge',
'username' => 'forge',
'password' => '',
with these lines:
'host' => $_ENV['DB_HOST'],
'database' => $_ENV['DB_NAME'],
'username' => $_ENV['DB_USER'],
'password' => $_ENV['DB_PASS'],

Create a file named env-template.php in your blog.dev/ folder or project.dev folder. Add the $_ENV['key_names'] that you'll use in here. DO NOT PROVIDE ANY VALUES IN THIS FILE. This is a template file that's just to keep a nice list of your ENV variables. The values in this file will always be blank strings.
<?php
return array(
'DB_HOST' => '',
'DB_NAME' => '',
'DB_USER' => '',
'DB_PASS' => '',
);

Create a file named .env.local.php immediatley in your blog.dev/ folder or project.dev/ folder
`<?php

return array(
'DB_HOST' => '127.0.0.1',
'DB_NAME' => 'your_existing_database_name',
'DB_USER' => 'your_db_username',
'DB_PASS' => 'your_lengthy_password',
);`

Remember that your database, db user, and db password need to already exist or be created before you can use them here.

To do this, go to the ~/vagrant-lamp on your Mac,
Run ansible-playbook ansible/mysql-user-db.yml -l vagrant -e "db_name=<your database name>"

Also:
Add a constructor to your BaseController that will check the CSRF token for POST, PUT, and DELETE requests.

	public function __construct()
	{
		// require csrf token for all post, delete, and put actions
	    $this->beforeFilter('csrf', array('on' => array('post', 'delete', 'put')));
	}