Directory Structure

Change default app directory

There are use cases when you might want to rename your app directory to something else. In Laravel4 you could just change a config entry, here’s one way to do it in Laravel5.

In this example we’ll be renaming the app directory to src.

Override Application class

The directories name app is hardcoded into the core Application class, so it has to be overridden. Create a new file Application.php. I prefer to keep mine in the src directory (the one we’ll be replacing app with), but you can place it elsewhere.

Here’s how the overridden class should look like. If you want a different name, just change the string src to something else.

namespace App;

class Application extends \Illuminate\Foundation\Application
{
    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    public function path($path = '')
    {
        return $this->basePath . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'src' . ($path ? DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $path : $path);
    }
}

Save the file. We’re done with it.

Calling the new class

Open up bootstrap/app.php and locate

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

We’ll be replacing it with this

$app = new App\Application(
    realpath(__DIR__.'/../')
);

Composer

Open up your composer.json file and change autoloading to match your new location

"psr-4": {
    "App\\": "src/"
}

And finally, in the command line run composer dump-autoload and your app should be served from the src directory.

Change the Controllers directory

if we want to change the Controllers directory we need:

Move and/or rename the default Controllers directory where we want it. For example from app/Http/Controllers to app/Controllers
Update all the namespaces of the files inside the Controllers folder, making they adhere to the new path, respecting the PSR-4 specific.
Change the namespace that is applied to the routes.php file, by editing app\Providers\RouteServiceProvider.php and change this:

protected $namespace = 'App\Http\Controllers';

to this:

protected $namespace = 'App\Controllers';