Installation

#Requirements

Right now, NativePHP for mobile only supports building iOS applications. Android is in the works already and coming soon!

Apple's tooling for building iOS apps requires that you compile your applications using macOS.

1. PHP 8.3+
2. Laravel 10 or higher
3. An Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 12+ with Xcode 16+
4. An active Apple Developer account
5. A NativePHP for iOS license
6. Optional iOS device

You don't need a physical iOS device to compile your application and test it for iOS, as NativePHP for mobile supports the iOS Simulator. However, we highly recommend that you test your application on a real device before submitting to the App Store.

You can download Xcode from the Mac App Store.

The most painless way to get PHP and Node up and running on your system is with Laravel Herd. It's fast and free!

#Laravel

NativePHP for mobile is built to work best with Laravel. You can install it into an existing Laravel application, or start a new one.

#Private package

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 via Anystack.

Instructions on how to prepare your application to use this private package are made available to you after purchase.

#Install NativePHP for iOS

composer require nativephp/ios

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

#Run the NativePHP installer

php artisan native:install

The NativePHP installer works similarly to NativePHP for desktop, taking care of setting up and configuring your Laravel application to work with iOS.

After you've run this command, you'll see a new ios folder in the root of your Laravel project.

We'll come back to this later.

#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 in the iOS Simulator by default.

#Running on a real device

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

You will need to get the device's UDID. You can find this by connecting the device to your Mac and opening it in the Finder. Click on model name at the top until the UDID appears, then right-click on it to copy it.

Then you can simply run, replacing {UDID} with your device's UDID:

php artisan native:run {UDID}

Alternatively, you may open the ios/NativePHP.xcodeproj file in Xcode and run builds using Xcode's UI.

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