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Installation

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Requirements

If you can run Laravel 8, 7 or 6, you can install Backpack. Backpack does not have additional requirements. For the following process, we assume:

• you have a working installation of Laravel (an existing project is fine, you don't need a fresh Laravel install);

• you have configured your .ENV file with your database and mail information;

• you can run the composer command from any directory (you have composer registered as a global command); if you need to run php composer.phar or reference another directory, please remember to adapt the commands below to your configuration;

Installation

Install Core Packages

0) Open your project folder in your terminal:

cd your-laravel-project-name

1) In your project's main directory:

# require Backpack using Composer
composer require backpack/crud:"4.1.*"
composer require --dev backpack/generators

# run the installation command
php artisan backpack:install

2) [optional] Backpack assumes you already have your Eloquent Models properly set up. If you don't, consider using something to quickly generate Migrations & Models. You can use anything you want, but here are the options we recommend:

• a) Generate from a web interface - Backpack Devtools - premium product, paid separately. A simple GUI to quickly generate Migrations, Models, Factories, Seeders and CRUDs, right from your browser. Works well for entities of all sizes.

• b) Generate from the command-line - Laracasts Generators - free & open-source. Adds a new artisan command so that you can do php artisan make:migration:schema create_users_table --schema="username:string, email:string:unique". Works well for smaller entities.

• c) Generate from a YAML file - LaravelShift's Blueprint - free & open-source. Enables you to create a draft.yml file in your repo, where you can specify the column using their custom YAML syntax. Works well for small & medium entities.

3) Take note that:

• By default all users are considered admins; If that's not what you want in your application (you have both users and admins), please:
  • Change app/Http/Middleware/CheckIfAdmin.php, particularly checkIfUserIsAdmin($user), to make sure you only allow admins to access the admin panel;
  • Change app/Providers/RouteServiceProvider::HOME, which will send logged in (but not admin) users to /home, to something that works for your app; This is only needed in Laravel 7+;
• Change configuration values in config/backpack/base.php to make the admin panel your own. Backpack is white label, so you can change everything: menu color, project name, developer name etc.
• If your User model has been moved (it is not App\User.php), please change config/backpack/base.php to use the correct user model using the user_model_fqn config key. If you are using Laravel 8 and up, you need to change this. Because by default Laravel 8 and up save the User model inside the Models directory.

That's it. If you already know how to use Backpack, next up you'll probably want to create CRUD Panels.

If it's your first time installing Backpack, it is highly recommended that you go through our Getting Started series, to understand how Backpack works. That's why we created it - to help you learn how to use this admin panel framework. In ~23 minutes we'll teach you 80% of what you can do, and how.

Install Add-ons

In case you want to add extra functionality that's already been built, check out the installation steps for the add-ons we've developed.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Error: The process X exceeded the timeout of 60 seconds. It might mean Github or Packagist is unavailable at the moment. This usually doesn't last for more than a few minutes, so you can run php artisan backpack:install --timeout=600 to increase the timeout to 10 minutes. If this doesn't work either, take a look behind the scenes with php artisan backpack:install --timeout=600 --debug;

• Error: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1071 Specified key was too long. Your MySQL version might be a bit old. Please apply this quick fix, then run php artisan migrate:fresh.

• Any other installation error? If you can't install Backpack because of a different error, you can try the manual installation process, which you can tweak to your needs.