How to serve index.html with Laravel?

Question

I am struggling to understand how can someone load index.html file with Laravel. It seems to work only with index.php which is not something I want.

Here is a problem:

I have two folders client and server. My server folder contains the entire Laravel app. My client directory contains AngularJS app. (I can't use public directory)

I want Laravel to serve index.html along with all static files from the client directory.

Changing 'public' => __DIR__.'/../public' did somewhat work, but then it breaks all my routes, i.e. no matter what I type for URL index.html gets loaded with broken static assets. For example /api/users does not return a JSON object anymore but the same index.html.

Is there a domain specific reason you cannot use blade templates to serve your angular application? — Jeff Lambert
– Jeff Lambert, Commented Aug 21, 2014 at 4:55
@watcher I am using other languages besides PHP. A single client directory served by many frameworks using various languages. — Sahat Yalkabov
– Sahat Yalkabov, Commented Aug 21, 2014 at 4:58
what is your project directory structure? You could be better off serving your angular application by default rather than laravel and instead trying to bootstrap laravel only for the requests that it is meant to handle rather than the other way around (if that's what you're trying and I'm understanding you correctly) — Jeff Lambert
– Jeff Lambert, Commented Aug 21, 2014 at 5:06
@watcher The approach you are suggesting requires enabling cross origin request policy which I don't know how to do, since I will need to start serving AngularJS via python -m SimpleHTTPServer for example and Laravel server on another port. — Sahat Yalkabov
– Sahat Yalkabov, Commented Aug 21, 2014 at 5:26

user2600285 · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-21 21:23:54Z

12

I am not sure what's going on with your file structure, however, to load html files through the php engine you can use:

View::addExtension('html', 'php');

Then,

Route::get('/', function()
{
    return View::make('index');
});

should return index.html.

answered Aug 21, 2014 at 21:23

user2600285

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2 Comments

basagabi Over a year ago

Hope the TS could mark this as the accepted answer. Ran into this issue as well and added the addExtension. It now accepts either php or html file.

Felix Eve Over a year ago

Where are you putting the code View::addExtension('html', 'php')?

Jeff Lambert · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-21 05:59:19Z

I believe I understand you now. Here's a potential solution, assuming a directory structure something along the lines of this:

/
    /client
        index.html 
    /server
        /app
        /bootstrap
        /public
        /vendor
        ...

Use a blade template within Laravel. Your case is pretty unique, so its not going to be a 'normal' blade template. It can look like this:

{{ file_get_contents(base_path() . '../client/index.html') }}

If you can instead use an index.php file inside of your /client directory it could also look like this:

<?php include base_path() . '../client/index.php'; ?>

I'm only pointing this out because you could then use other PHP statements inside of the file should you need or desire to. You could also potentially pass data from your controller all the way down and into this index.php file with the normal View::make('angular')->with('var', $var) and they will automatically be in scope.

This seems a little hacky, and it is, but should keep you from having to modify anything else. Of course, your index.html file should include the entire markup for the angular application. Another benefit is that, since you're pretty much still contained completely within Laravel, you could potentially move stuff 'up' and out of your angular application and back into the framework should it not be necessary there (for whatever reason).

Saravanakumar Arumugam · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-24 16:53:19Z

3

If you want to serve for local development using php artisan serve, change following lines in "server.php"

    if ($uri !== '/' && file_exists(__DIR__.'/public'.$uri)) {
        return false;
    }

    require_once __DIR__.'/public/index.php';

to

    if ($uri === '/') {
        $uri = "/index.html";
        return false;
    }
    if (file_exists(__DIR__.'/public'.$uri)) {
        return false;
    }

    require_once __DIR__.'/public/api/index.php';

Now you can serve "index.html" as default document.

Only works if angular build output is in public folder with laravel api (index.php and .htaccess) in subfolder.

Hope it can help someone!

edited Apr 24, 2020 at 16:53

answered Apr 24, 2020 at 16:43

Saravanakumar Arumugam

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