Introduction

Valet+ is a development environment for macOS. No Vagrant, no Docker, no /etc/hosts file. Yeah, we like it too.

Valet+ configures your Mac to always run Nginx in the background when your machine starts. Then, using DnsMasq, Valet+ proxies all requests on the *.dev domain to point to sites installed on your local machine.

In other words, a blazing fast development environment. Valet+ provides a great alternative if you want flexible basics or prefer extreme speed.

Some key differences compared to Valet:

• PHP version switch
• Xdebug (on/off mode)
• PHP extensions (mcrypt, intl, opcache, apcu)
• Optimized PHP configuration using opcache
• Mysql (with optimized configuration)
• Redis
• Elasticsearch (optional)
• Many more features outlined below...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Installation
  • Serving sites
• Switching PHP version
• Xdebug
  • PHPstorm
• Database
  • Creating databases
  • Importing databases
  • Open database in Sequel Pro
• Redis
• Open project in browser
• Securing Sites With TLS
• Valet drivers
• Valet Documentation
• Credits

Installation

⚠️ Valet requires macOS and Homebrew. Before installation, you should make sure that no other programs such as Apache or Nginx are binding to your local machine's port 80.

1. Install or update Homebrew to the latest version using brew update.
2. Install PHP 7.0 using Homebrew via brew install homebrew/php/php70.
3. Install Valet+ with Composer via composer global require weprovide/valet-plus. Make sure the ~/.composer/vendor/bin directory is in your system's "PATH".
4. Run the valet install command. This will configure and install Valet+ and DnsMasq, and register Valet's daemon to launch when your system starts.
5. Once Valet is installed, try pinging any *.dev domain on your terminal using a command such as ping foobar.dev. If Valet+ is installed correctly you should see this domain responding on 127.0.0.1. If not you might have to restart your system. Especially when coming from the Dinghy (docker) solution.

ℹ️ Valet will automatically start its daemon each time your machine boots. There is no need to run valet start or valet install ever again once the initial Valet+ installation is complete.

ℹ️ To update Valet+ to the latest version use the composer global update command in your terminal. After upgrading, it is good practice to run the valet install command so Valet can make additional upgrades to your configuration files if necessary.

Serving sites

Once Valet+ is installed, you're ready to start serving sites. Valet provides a command to help you serve your sites: valet park. Which will register the current working directory as projects root. Generally this directory is ~/sites.

1. Create a sites directory: mkdir ~/sites
2. cd ~/sites
3. valet park

That's all there is to it. Now, any project you create within your "parked" directory will automatically be served using the http://folder-name.dev convention.

For example:

1. mkdir ~/sites/example
2. cd ~/sites/example
3. echo "<?php echo 'Valet+ at your service' > index.php"
4. Go to http://example.dev, you should see Valet+ at your service

Switching PHP version

Switch PHP version using one of there commands:

valet use 5.6

valet use 7.0

valet use 7.1

Xdebug

Xdebug support is build in. It works on port 9000 after you enable it.

Enable Xdebug:

valet xdebug on

Disable Xdebug:

valet xdebug off

⚠️ Xdebug makes your environment slower. That's why we allow to fully enable / disable it. When not debugging it's best to disable it by running valet xdebug off.

PHPstorm

To use Xdebug with PHPstorm you don't have to configure anything. Just run valet xdebug on and click the Xdebug button on the top right:

Then install Xdebug helper for Chrome and enable it when viewing the page you want to use Xdebug on.

Database

Valet+ automatically installs mysql 5.7 with 5.6 compatibility mode included. It includes a tweaked my.cnf which is aimed at improving speed.

Username: root

Password: root

Creating databases

Create databases using:

valet db create <name>

When no name is given it'll try to find the closest git repository directory name. When it can't find one it'll use the current working directory name.

valet db create

Dropping databases

Drop a database using:

valet db drop <name>

When no name is given it'll try to find the closest git repository directory name. When it can't find one it'll use the current working directory name.

valet db drop

Resetting databases

Drop and create a database using:

valet db reset <name>

When no name is given it'll try to find the closest git repository directory name. When it can't find one it'll use the current working directory name.

valet db reset

Exporting databases

Export a database:

valet db export <database> <filename>

When no database is given it'll try to find the closest git repository directory name. When it can't find one it'll use the current working directory name.

When no filename is given it will use <database>.sql.

Importing databases

Import a database with progress bar

valet db import <filename>.sql <name>

When no name is given it'll try to find the closest git repository directory name. When it can't find one it'll use the current working directory name.

Open database in Sequel Pro

Valet+ has first class support for opening databases in Sequel Pro, a popular MySQL client for Mac.

valet db open <name>

When no name is given it'll try to find the closest git repository directory name. When it can't find one it'll open Sequel Pro without pre-selected database.

valet db open

Mailhog

Mailhog is used to catch emails send from php. You can access the panel at http://localhost:8025.

Redis

Redis is automatically installed and listens on the default port 6379. The redis socket is located at /tmp/redis.sock

Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch can be installed using:

valet elasticsearch install

It will run on the default port 9200.

Git Tower

Open current git project in Tower

valet tower

PHPstorm

Open current git project in PHPstorm

valet phpstorm

VScode

Open current git project in Visual Studio Code

valet vscode

Open project in browser

To open the current project in your default browser:

valet open

Copy ssh key

valet ssh-key

Automatic configuration [beta]

Automatically configure environment for the project you're in.

valet configure

Supported systems

Magento 2

Automatically configure the base url / elastic search configuration in the database for Magento 2.

Securing Sites With TLS

By default, Valet serves sites over plain HTTP. However, if you would like to serve a site over encrypted TLS using HTTP/2, use the secure command. For example, if your site is being served by Valet on the example.dev domain, you should run the following command to secure it:

valet secure example

To "unsecure" a site and revert back to serving its traffic over plain HTTP, use the unsecure command. Like the secure command, this command accepts the host name that you wish to unsecure:

valet unsecure example

Log locations

The nginx-error.log and mysql.log are located at ~/.valet/Log.

Other logs, including the PHP error log, are located at /usr/local/var/log

Valet drivers

Valet uses drivers to handle requests. You can read more about those here.

By default these are included:

• Static HTML
• Magento
• Magento 2
• Symfony
• Wordpress / Bedrock
• Laravel
• Lumen
• CakePHP 3
• Craft
• Jigsaw
• Slim
• Statamic
• Zend Framework

A full list can be found here

Valet Documentation

Documentation for Valet can be found on the Laravel website.

Credits

This project is an improved fork of laravel/valet. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project.

Authors

• Tim Neutkens (@timneutkens)