In this episode, we kick things off by setting up a brand new Laravel project using the Laravel installer. We name our project "Laravel Booking System" and purposely skip the starter kit so we can start from scratch. For our testing setup, we opt for Pest, which offers a nice and clean testing experience.
We then move on to setting up our database, choosing MySQL for the main system. We make sure to run migrations (after creating the database, of course) so that everything is ready to go for development.
An important bit covered here is swapping the test database driver to use SQLite in memory, rather than hitting our actual database. This helps keep our tests clean and isolated from our real data. You'll see how to check the phpunit.xml to make that adjustment, so you don't end up with unwanted test data in MySQL.
We then take a look at the default Pest tests that arrive with the project. We run Pest to make sure everything's wired up and working, and talk about how you might need to create an alias for Pest if it isn't set up for you already.
Finally, we clean up the default example tests and talk through how this fresh setup leaves us ready to build our core features. In the next episodes, we'll dive into building out our app's custom functionality—and after that's in place, we'll tackle the UI!
So by the end of this intro, you’ll have a fully functional Laravel app with Pest tests ready to support you as you build out your booking system.