How to change public folder to public_html in laravel 5

I'm using a shared hosting which uses cPanel as its control panel and within the cPanel public_html is the default root directory, because of this I can't get my Laravel application work properly.

Is there any way to make Laravel use public_html instead of public folder?

Quite easy to find this with a simple search.

See: https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/where-do-you-set-public-directory-laravel-5

In your index.php add the following 3 lines.

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Turn On The Lights
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| We need to illuminate PHP development, so let us turn on the lights.
| This bootstraps the framework and gets it ready for use, then it
| will load up this application so that we can run it and send
| the responses back to the browser and delight our users.
|
*/

$app = require_once __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/app.php';

// set the public path to this directory
$app->bind('path.public', function() {
    return __DIR__;
});

Edit:

---

As Burak Erdem mentioned, another option (and more preferable) is to put this in the \App\Providers\AppServiceProvider register() method.

/**
 * Register any application services.
 *
 * @return void
 */
public function register()
{
    // ...
    
    $this->app->bind('path.public', function() {
        return base_path('public_html');
    });
}

If Robert's index.php solution is not working for you, you can also register the following code at Application Service Provider (App\Providers\AppServiceProvider.php).

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

public function register()
{
    $this->app->bind('path.public', function() {
        return base_path().'/public_http';
    });
}

Server

Methods described in topic are working just fine, so modyfing App\Providers\AppServiceProvider.php register method should do the job:

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

public function register()
{
    $this->app->bind('path.public', function() {
        return base_path() . '/public_http';
    });
}

Local php artisan serve development

However, there is one more issue you can experience. If you're developing your app on local machine and you're using php artisan serve command to serve your app you're going to break it with above syntax only. You still need to adjust server.php file which exists in main directory. Edit the contents of it and replace each occurance of /public to /public_html, so it looks like this:

<?php

/**
 * Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
 *
 * @package  Laravel
 * @author   Taylor Otwell <taylor@laravel.com>
 */

$uri = urldecode(
    parse_url($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], PHP_URL_PATH)
);

// This file allows us to emulate Apache's "mod_rewrite" functionality from the
// built-in PHP web server. This provides a convenient way to test a Laravel
// application without having installed a "real" web server software here.
if ($uri !== '/' && file_exists(__DIR__.'/public_html'.$uri)) {
    return false;
}

require_once __DIR__.'/public_html/index.php';

After that. Just stop your server and reload it with php artisan serve.

Front end laravel-mix development

If you're using webpack and laravel-mix to generate your css and js files then this also needs some update. Without tweaking webpack.mix.js you will end up with something like this on npm run watch or npm run production:

.
..
public
  _html
    js
  public_html
    css
public_html

So it's going to mess up your code. To clarify this you have to provide a public path to your webpack.mix.js file. It could look like this:

const mix = require('laravel-mix');

mix.setPublicPath('public_html/');
mix.js('resources/js/app.js', 'js')
mix.sass('resources/sass/app.scss', 'css');

This is going to change the default definition of public directory from public to public_html and next lines provides a relative path to your setPublicPath value.

Happy coding.

Go to this address:

/app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php

and append this code to end of file:

public function register()
{   $this->app->bind('path.public', function() {
    return realpath(base_path().'/../public_html');
  });
}

Simple root directory create .htaccess file and add code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Just want to update all previous answers, if your public_html is not inside laravel folder, then you need to use this code:

$this->app->bind('path.public', function() {
   return realpath(base_path().'/../public_html');
});

These answers did not work for laravel 5.5, but my own method can help you.

Step 1: Discard all files except the public file to the main directory on the server.

Step 2: Public file to the public_html file on the server.

Step 3: Pull index.php file from public_html and change it like this.

Step 3A:

Orginal -> require __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';

Changes -> require __DIR__.'/../**created_folder**/vendor/autoload.php';

Original -> $app = require_once __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/app.php';

Changes -> $app = require_once __DIR__.'/../**Created_folder**/bootstrap/app.php';

Step 4: Create symlinkcreate.php

Step 4A: <?php symlink('/home/**server_directory**/**created_folder**/storage/app/public','/home/**server_directory**/public_html/storage');

Step 4B: yourwebsite.com/symlinkcreate.php visit

Step 4C: symlinkcreate.php delete your server.

Finally, the directory structure looks like this:

/etc
/logs
/lscache
/mail
/Your_Created_Folder
  ../LARAVEL_FOLDERS
/public_html
  ../css
  ../js
  ../.htaccess
  ../index.php
  ../web.config
/ssl
/tmp

Finish.

Laravel 5.5 public_html sorunu için bu cevabı gönül rahatlığıyla kullanabilirsiniz.

For those that need to change the public path so that it is also available to Artisan, add the following to bootstrap/app.php, just after the last singleton method:

$app->bind('path.public', function () {
    return base_path("<your public directory name>");
});

It took two days for me to figure out but finally I deployed my Laravel-project to my cPanel webhosting by doing next steps:

1. Change the server.php file as following:

if ($uri !== '/' && file_exists(__DIR__ . '/public_html' .$uri)) {
    return false;
}

require_once __DIR__ . '/public_html/index.php';

2. Change webpack.mix.js as following:

mix.js('resources/js/app.js', 'public_html/js')
    .postCss('resources/css/app.css', 'public_html/css', [
        //
    ]);

3. Change the name of "public" folder in Laravel-project to "public_html" and upload the code to the root directory cPanel. Make sure that you have a back-up from the current public_html directory. If you have the correct PHP version on your hosting and edited .env file then everything should work properly.

My cPanel root directory (from File Manager) looks like this:

And public_html (that originally was public directory) looks like this:

If you have questions feel free to contact me :)

It's not so easy like binding. The cleanest and more elaborated answer is provided by ferrolho here https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/where-do-you-set-public-directory-laravel-5

But the fastest answer is creating a symbolic link named public pointing to public_html and put your index.php in the last one.

1. In bootstrap/app.php:

   Add

   $app->bind('path.public', function() {
     return __DIR__;
   });
   

   right after

   $app = new Illuminate\Foundation\Application(
     realpath(__DIR__)
   );
   

2. Fixing server.php:

   Change

   if ($uri !== '/' && file_exists(__DIR__.'/public'.$uri)) {
     return false;
   }
   
   require_once __DIR__.'/public/index.php';
   

   to

   if ($uri !== '/' && file_exists(__DIR__.'/public_html'.$uri)) {
     return false;
   }
   
   require_once __DIR__.'/public_html/index.php';
   

3. In .gitignore, change

   /public/hot
   /public/storage
   

   to

   /public_html/hot
   /public_html/storage
   

4. In webpack.mix.js, change

   mix.js('resources/js/app.js', 'public/js')
     .sass('resources/sass/app.scss', 'public/css');
   

   to

   mix.js('resources/js/app.js', 'public_html/js')
     .sass('resources/sass/app.scss', 'public_html/css');
   

I'm still looking for a fix for the asset() function, which remains broken...

For me none of this worked until I changed the root public folder in server settings. In production it is in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/<your_site_name>. Edit it with a text editor and just scroll until you see root path pointing to /public folder. Change that to whatever is your new public folder and restart the server. On local, I had to change path in Homestead.yaml and /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/<your_site_name> after I SSHed into Vagrant. vagrant reload --provision to make sure it caught on. Then I also edited index.php and registered a new path in the service provider just in case, but it seems to work without it. I don't use any 3rd party dependencies with Laravel though so I don't know if this will work in that case.

The simplest solution as for me is to create symbolic link.

1. Make backup of your public_html folder.

2. Connect to your server via ssh.

3. In my particular scenario, whole application is located in ~/laravel folder.

4. Now you have to be in the ~/ folder:

5. Run rm -r public_html. This command will delete public_html folder and all its contents.

6. Make symbolic link ln -s $(pwd)/laravel/public $(pwd)/public_html. $(pwd) will be substituted with absolute path from root of the server.

7. Now you should be able to see desired result.