README

A robust starter template designed to streamline RESTful API development with Laravel 13. This boilerplate comes pre-configured with essential tools and libraries to ensure code quality, documentation, and maintainability.

Why another boilerplate?

Recently I have discovered some baas services and project, e.g. supabase, firebase, pocketbase and Tailbase. They are great and can help developers a lot to sketch up a prototype quickly.

However, AI has been bring in a huge changes with the development workflow, and those baas services' advantages are becoming less obvious. With AI, developers can generate code snippets, database schemas, and even entire modules in seconds. This significantly reduces the time and effort required to build backend services from scratch. And the most important part is that Laravel provides a clean and elegant syntax, making it easier to read and maintain the code, a better development experience and native scalability -- you don't need to worry about outgrowing the platform's limitations and vendor lock-in.

This boilerplate is target to let any developers familiar with Laravel to quickly start a new API project with best practices and essential tools pre-configured, so they can focus on building features and delivering value. it may not suit for all scenarios, but it's a better replacement for those BaaS services for most projects.

🚀 Features

Framework: Laravel 13 (PHP 8.3+)
Authentication: Dual token + cookie auth (Sanctum), password / OTP / OAuth, signed-URL email verification
Configurable security: per-endpoint rate limits, Password::defaults() policy, login email-verification gate
Standard API envelope: base Controller response helpers plus a global exception → JSON renderer
API Documentation: Automated docs via Scribe
Roles & Permissions: Manage access control with Laratrust
File uploads: Two-phase upload with TTL + scheduled cleanup; works with local or s3
Data Transfer Objects: Type-safe data handling using Spatie Laravel Data
Code Quality: Automated code styling with Laravel Pint
Testing: Comprehensive testing suite with PHPUnit
AI integration: Laravel Boost MCP and shared agent rules (CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / GEMINI.md / .cursor/rules / .github/copilot-instructions.md)

📚 Documentation

Per-feature docs live in docs/. The index links every module — start there or jump straight to what you need:

Area	Doc
Auth overview & route reference	docs/authentication.md
OTP / passwordless	docs/otp.md
OAuth / social login	docs/social-auth.md
Email verification	docs/email-verification.md
Password policy	docs/password-policy.md
Rate limiting	docs/rate-limiting.md
API responses & exception envelope	docs/api-responses.md
RBAC (roles & permissions)	docs/rbac.md
File uploads (TTL + cleanup)	docs/files.md
Auth event email notifications	docs/notifications.md
Roadmap memo	docs/devlog/2026-05-10-boilerplate-roadmap.md

🛠 Installation

Choose one of the following installation paths.

GitHub Template

Click Use this template on the GitHub repository, create your application repository, then clone it locally. This is the recommended path when you want a fresh Git history and GitHub repository workflow.

Composer

composer create-project mrsuner/laravel-api-boilerplate my-api "^1.0"
cd my-api

Composer creates a clean application without the boilerplate's Git history, copies .env.example, generates APP_KEY, creates the default SQLite database, and runs migrations.

Git clone

git clone https://github.com/mrsuner/laravel-api-boilerplate.git my-api
cd my-api

Clone preserves the boilerplate repository history. Remove or replace the origin remote before starting your own project.

Finish a Template or clone installation

composer install
npm ci
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
php artisan migrate --seed
npm run build

SQLite works by default. Configure another database in .env before migration when required.

⚡ Usage

Development Server

Start the local development server:

composer run dev

Or separately:

php artisan serve

Running Tests

Execute the test suite using PHPUnit:

php artisan test

Code Formatting

Fix code style issues using Laravel Pint:

./vendor/bin/pint

Generating API Documentation

Generate static HTML documentation:

php artisan scribe:generate

📦 Key Packages

knuckleswtf/scribe: Generates API documentation from your code.
santigarcor/laratrust: Handles roles and permissions.
spatie/laravel-data: Powerful data transfer objects.

📄 License

Laravel API Boilerplate is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.

mrsuner / laravel-api-boilerplate

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