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Installation

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Requirements

If you can run Laravel 8 or 9, 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 using Composer

Go to your Laravel project's directory, in your terminal, then:

composer require backpack/crud
php artisan backpack:install

Follow the prompts - in the end, the installer will also tell you your admin panel's URL, where you should go and login.

NOTE: When the installer asks you if you would like to create and admin user, Backpack assumes that you are using the default user structure with name, email and password fields. If that's not the case, please reply NO to that question and manually create your admin user.

NOTE: The installation command is interactive - it will ask you questions. You can bypass the questions by adding the --no-interaction argument to the install command.

Configure

In most cases, it's a good idea to look at the configuration files and make the admin panel your own:

• You should change the 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.
• 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;
• If your User model has been moved from the default App\Models\User.php, please change config/backpack/base.php to use the correct user model under the user_model_fqn config key;

Create your Eloquent Models

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.

Create your CRUDs

For each Eloquent model you want to have an admin panel, run:

php artisan backpack:crud {model} # use the model name (singular)

Alternatively, you can generate CRUDs for all Eloqunet models, by running:

php artisan backpack:build

Then go through each CRUD file (Controller, Request, Route Item, Sidebar Item) and customize as you fit. If you don't know what those are, and how you can customize them... please take go through our Getting Started section, it's important. At the very least, read our Crash Course.

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.