README

Laravel API Starter Kit

Idea Brief

The Laravel API Starter Kit is a comprehensive boilerplate designed specifically for backend developers who need to quickly scaffold RESTful APIs using Laravel. Unlike general-purpose starter kits, this one focuses exclusively on API development, implementing industry best practices like Service and Repository patterns to ensure clean, maintainable, and testable code. This starter kit aims to solve common challenges in API development by providing a standardized structure, consistent response formats, and allowing developers to focus on business logic rather than repetitive boilerplate code.

Core Features

The API Starter Kit includes the following core features:

• Service Class Pattern
• Repository Pattern
• Standardized API Response Structure
• API Versioning
• Query Builder (Dynamic filtering, sorting, and pagination using Spatie Query Builder)
• Authentication using JWT
• Request Validation
• Resource Transformers
• API Documentation
• Telescope for Development & Debugging.
• Code Quality Tools (Pint, Larastan, IDE Helper)
• Pest for Testing (already configured and ready to use, see current tests).
• Docker Configuration
• Git Hooks (pre-commit and pre-push to automatically run Pint, Larastan, and test suites)

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• Composer
• MySQL 8.0+ / PostgreSQL 12+ / SQLite 3

Installation

Using Laravel Installer

laravel new my-app --using=hdeawy/api-starter-kit

Using Composer

composer create-project hdeawy/api-starter-kit

Using Docker

• Install starter using Docker

docker run -it --rm \
    -v $(pwd):/app \
    -w /app \
    -e COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \
    composer:2.5 \
    create-project hdeawy/api-starter-kit .

• Update the .env file with your database credentials

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=mysql
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel_api
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=password

• 🔥 Start the Docker containers

sail up -d

• Finally, run the migrations and generate the JWT secret

sail artisan migrate

sail artisan jwt:secret

Manually

• Clone the repository

git clone git@github.com:hdeawy/api-starter-kit.git
cd api-starter-kit

• Install dependencies

composer install

• Copy the .env.example file to .env and set your environment variables

cp .env.example .env

• Final setup

php artisan key:generate
php artisan jwt:secret
php artisan migrate

Testing

Run the tests with Pest:

php artisan test

Laravel Pint

Code style fixer for minimalists

composer pint

Larastan

Finding errors in your code:

composer stan

Contributing

Thank you for considering contributing to this API Starter Kit!. All the contribution guidelines are mentioned here.

Security Vulnerabilities

If you discover a security vulnerability within the starter kit, please send an e-mail to me via ahmedhdeawy@gmail.com.

License

This Laravel API Starter Kit is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.