Change the public folder of Laravel 5.1

Question

I was looking for a way to change the public's folder name in laravel 5.1, since my host only allows me to use a htdocs folder.

Answer 1

I followed these steps, mentioned here : https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/where-do-you-set-public-directory-laravel-5 :

1. in bootstrap/app.php, add

   $app->bind('path.public', function() {
         return base_path('htdocs');
   });
   

2. Then, in /server.php, change the two occurences of publicto htdocs (Or whatever you wan to use).

I sincerely hope that'll work in every situation.

Edit 2016-10-18 :

I recently had to do the same, but this time my host allowed me to delete the "htdocs" folder (And I had a ssh access) :

• I installed Laravel in the root folder, below the "htdocs" folder
• I deleted the "htdocs" folder
• I created a symbolic link to map "htdocs" to "public" : ln -s public htdocs

Answer 2

This is how i did it.. updates and other things work perfectly till now..

make a new folder on root.. and move all folders inside it(ill call it "myfolder" for example).. then move files inside public folder to root.. so it should look like..

/myfolder/
/index.php
/server.php
/.htaccess
/favicon

so open server.php with text editor and replace with this code..

<?php

/**
 * Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
 *
 * @package  Laravel
 * @author   Taylor Otwell <[e-mail]>
 */

$uri = urldecode(
    parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_PATH)
);

// This file allows us to emulate Apache's "mod_rewrite" functionality from the
// built-in PHP web server. This provides a convenient way to test a Laravel
// application without having installed a "real" web server software here.
if ($uri !== '/' && file_exists(__DIR__.'/'.$uri)) {
    return false;
}

require_once __DIR__.'/index.php';

then on index.php

<?php

/**
 * Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
 *
 * @package  Laravel
 * @author   Taylor Otwell <[e-mail]>
 */

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Register The Auto Loader
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Composer provides a convenient, automatically generated class loader for
| our application. We just need to utilize it! We'll simply require it
| into the script here so that we don't have to worry about manual
| loading any of our classes later on. It feels nice to relax.
|
*/

require __DIR__.'/myfolder/bootstrap/autoload.php';

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Turn On The Lights
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| We need to illuminate PHP development, so let us turn on the lights.
| This bootstraps the framework and gets it ready for use, then it
| will load up this application so that we can run it and send
| the responses back to the browser and delight our users.
|
*/

$app = require_once __DIR__.'/myfolder/bootstrap/app.php';

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Run The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Once we have the application, we can handle the incoming request
| through the kernel, and send the associated response back to
| the client's browser allowing them to enjoy the creative
| and wonderful application we have prepared for them.
|
*/

$kernel = $app->make(Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel::class);

$response = $kernel->handle(
    $request = Illuminate\Http\Request::capture()
);

$response->send();

$kernel->terminate($request, $response);

then go to "/myfolder/bootstrap/autoload.php"..

<?php

define('LARAVEL_START', microtime(true));

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Register The Composer Auto Loader
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Composer provides a convenient, automatically generated class loader
| for our application. We just need to utilize it! We'll require it
| into the script here so that we do not have to worry about the
| loading of any our classes "manually". Feels great to relax.
|
*/

require __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Include The Compiled Class File
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| To dramatically increase your application's performance, you may use a
| compiled class file which contains all of the classes commonly used
| by a request. The Artisan "optimize" is used to create this file.
|
*/

$compiledPath = __DIR__.'/cache/compiled.php';

if (file_exists($compiledPath)) {
    require $compiledPath;
}

and app.php inside same folder

<?php

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Create The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| The first thing we will do is create a new Laravel application instance
| which serves as the "glue" for all the components of Laravel, and is
| the IoC container for the system binding all of the various parts.
|
*/

$app = new Illuminate\Foundation\Application(
    realpath(__DIR__.'/../')
);

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Bind Important Interfaces
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Next, we need to bind some important interfaces into the container so
| we will be able to resolve them when needed. The kernels serve the
| incoming requests to this application from both the web and CLI.
|
*/

$app->singleton(
    Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel::class,
    App\Http\Kernel::class
);

$app->singleton(
    Illuminate\Contracts\Console\Kernel::class,
    App\Console\Kernel::class
);

$app->singleton(
    Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler::class,
    App\Exceptions\Handler::class
);

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Return The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This script returns the application instance. The instance is given to
| the calling script so we can separate the building of the instances
| from the actual running of the application and sending responses.
|
*/

return $app;

Works well for me on development and production environment..