Installation

#Requirements

1. PHP 8.3+
2. Laravel 10 or higher
3. A NativePHP for Mobile license

#For iOS

1. An Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 12+ with Xcode 16+
2. An active Apple Developer account
3. Optional iOS device

You do not need to enroll in the Apple Developer Program ($99/year) to develop and test your apps on a Simulator. But you will need to when you want to test your apps on real devices and start distributing them to your users via the App Store.

Note You cannot build iOS apps on Windows or Linux

#For Android

1. Android Studio Giraffe (or later)
2. The following environment variables set.
3. You should be able to successfully run java -v and adb devices from the terminal.
4. Windows only: You must have 7zip installed.

On macOS

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 17) // This isn't required if JAVA_HOME is already set in your environment variables (check using `printenv | grep JAVA_HOME`)
export ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$ANDROID_HOME/emulator:$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools

On Windows

set ANDROID_HOME=C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk
set PATH=%PATH%;%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%ANDROID_HOME%\platform-tools
 
# This isn't required if JAVA_HOME is already set in the Windows Env Variables
set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Microsoft\jdk-17.0.8.7-hotspot

You don't need a physical iOS/Android device to compile and test your application, as NativePHP for Mobile supports the iOS Simulator and Android emulators. However, we highly recommend that you test your application on a real device before submitting to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

#Laravel

NativePHP for Mobile is built to work with Laravel. You can install it into an existing Laravel application, or start a new one. The most painless way to get PHP up and running on Mac and Windows is with Laravel Herd. It's fast and free!

#Install NativePHP for Mobile

To make NativePHP for Mobile a reality has taken a lot of work and will continue to require even more. For this reason, it's not open source, and you are not free to distribute or modify its source code.

Before you begin, you will need to purchase a license. Licenses can be obtained here.

Once you have your license, you will need to add the following to your composer.json:

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "composer",
        "url": "https://nativephp.composer.sh"
    }
],

Then run:

composer require nativephp/mobile

If you experience a cURL error when running this command make sure you are running PHP v8.3+ in your CLI.

If this is the first time you're installing the package, you will be prompted to authenticate. Your username is the email address you used when purchasing your license. Your password is your license key.

This package contains all the libraries, classes, commands, and interfaces that your application will need to work with iOS and Android.

Before running the install command it is important to set the following variables in your .env:

NATIVEPHP_APP_ID=com.yourcompany.yourapp
NATIVEPHP_APP_VERSION="DEBUG"
NATIVEPHP_APP_VERSION_CODE="1"

#Run the NativePHP installer

php artisan native:install

The NativePHP installer takes care of setting up and configuring your Laravel application to work with iOS and Android.

#Start your app

Heads up! Before starting your app in a native context, try running it in the browser. You may bump into exceptions which need addressing before you can run your app natively, and may be trickier to spot when doing so.

Once you're ready:

php artisan native:run

This will start compiling your application and boot it on whichever device you select.

#Running on a real device

On iOS

If you want to run your app on a real iOS device, you need to make sure it is in Developer Mode and that it's been added to your Apple Developer account as a registered device.

On Android

On Android you need to enable developer options and have USB debugging (ADB) enabled.

And that's it! You should now see your Laravel application running as a native app! 🎉