Guides: Installation

Follow Laravel's instructions for a fresh Laravel install.

laravel new hiker-app

Once that's done, cd into the project directory:

cd hiker-app

Important {.alert.alert--info} In order to install Hiker, you'll need a (free) license. Request your beta key by sending us an email! This unique license will also provide access to all plugins & packages available in Hiker's marketplace (coming soon).

Run the following command to add Hiker's composer repository to the composer.json file:

composer config repositories.hiker composer https://repo.hiker.dev

As we're still in alpha at the moment, make sure the composer's minimum-stability is set to alpha:

composer config minimum-stability alpha

You can now run the require command to install Hiker:

composer require hiker-dev/hiker

Composer will automatically prompt for your user (account email) and password (license key). If you don't want to type them every time, we'd recommend storing your credentials.

composer config --global --auth http-basic.repo.hiker.dev [ACCOUNT E-MAIL] [LICENSE]

Beta release {.alert.alert--info} Early-access users are required to activate their license with a GitHub account. Use your GitHub account's e-mail address when authenticating your Hiker license with composer.

This command will store your account name and license key globally. If you need to store them locally, just remove the --global flag, but don't forget to add the generated auth.json file to your project's .gitignore!

Now that composer has installed hiker-dev/hiker and its dependencies, let's setup the project.

Now, let's run Hiker's installation command.

php artisan hiker:install

This will publish the components that compose the base layout of Hiker's interface. Refer to the Chrome documentation for more information.

It will then automatically run these two commands:

php artisan hiker:assets

This command copies Hiker's front-end assets to the public/vendor/hiker directory and needs to be ran whenerver you update Hiker.

php artisan hiker:config

This command copies Hiker's config files to the config directory.

Next, update the App\Models\User model so that it extends Hiker's base User class instead of Laravel's:

namespace App\Models;

use Hiker\Models\User as Authenticatable;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    // ...
}

Please note that the base Hiker User model itself extends Laravel's, so you can expect it to work just like you're used to. Hiker simply adds a few relations and internal methods.

In order to log in, we'll need to have a user, so let's seed one.

<?php

namespace Database\Seeders;

use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;

class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
    /**
     * Seed the application's database.
     */
    public function run(): void
    {
        User::factory()->create([
            'name' => 'Test User',
            'email' => '[email protected]',
            'password' => bcrypt('test')
        ]);
    }
}

php artisan migrate --seed

You're all set! Visit Hiker's login page (/admin/login by default, see the .env file to change the admin prefix) and use the seeded credentials, you should now be able to access your brand new Hiker installation: it's your blank canvas to create something amazing.
Happy coding!