[SOLVED] Laravel relative paths not working as expected on localhost

Laravel relative paths not working as expected on localhost

I'm just using Mac OS's native apache2 server for my localhost. In my httpd.conf file, I set

DocumentRoot "/Users/user_name/Local Sites/"

...that directory houses all my sites I work on locally:

Users
 -user_name
  --Local Sites
   ---site_1
   ---site_2
   ---site_3
   ---site_4

So, for my particular Laravel project for site_1, I set the following in .env:

APP_URL=http://localhost/site_1

...and again in config/app.php:

'url' => env('APP_URL', 'http://localhost/site_1'),

However, when I try to use one of Laravel's relative path builders, it includes the whole path above what I had defined as my document's root and server's localhost. For example:

public_path() = /Users/user_name/Local Sites/site_1/public

The problem, then, is that when I use that variable to, say, link to a .js file in public/js, the generated path is

http://localhost/Users/user_name/Local%20Sites/site_1/public

...which is invalid, of course, because the proper path is really

http://localhost/site_1/public

I'm sure I'm doing something stupid, but I'm too stupid to figure out what it is! My site works when I resolve those paths explicitly, but then of course everything breaks when I publish to my web host (with absolute instead of relative paths).

Solution

Do not mix the use of the helper function publich_path() and assets().

You should link your JS/CSS/Img the following way:

<script src="{{asset('js/main.js')}}"/>

Laravel will translate that call into

<script src="http://localhost/site_1/js/main.js"/>