In this episode, we kick things off by setting up a brand new Laravel project, which we'll be using for our eCommerce application. We'll use the Laravel Installer to spin up the project, set up our database connection (I'm using Postgres, but feel free to use MySQL), and run the initial migrations. Once that's done, we fire up the app in the browser to make sure everything works.
Next, we install Laravel Breeze, which gives us some basic authentication features right out of the box. We'll walk through the process of pulling in Breeze, running the installation command, running our npm scripts to build the frontend assets, and double-checking that we can register and log into the app. Breeze doesn't add any new migrations, so after a quick check, we confirm registration is working smoothly.
With that in place, the episode continues by adding Livewire to our app for reactive components. We'll install Livewire, add the necessary styles and scripts to our Blade layout, and then quickly make a simple "hello world" component to preview how it all works. After making sure everything is hooked up and displaying properly, we clean up by deleting the component.
Finally, we bring in Laravel Debugbar. This is super useful during development for keeping an eye on queries and debugging any issues that pop up. You’ll see how to enable or disable it as needed. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a fresh Laravel setup, authentication, Livewire, and Debugbar ready to go—perfect for building out our eCommerce project!