CRUD Step 1: Plan & Scaffold

What we are going to build

Over the next few lessons we will build a small Products manager — a page where you can list, add, edit and delete products. By the end you will have a real, working feature you fully understand. Follow along command-by-command; if you know nothing yet, that is fine — every step is explained.

Each product will have three things: a name, a price, and a description. CRUD apps in Laravel always have the same shape — you create three pieces and Laravel wires the rest:

1. A migration — the instructions that build the products table in the database.
2. A model (Product) — the Eloquent class that reads and writes those rows for you.
3. A resource controller — one class with a ready-made method for each CRUD action.

Step 1 — make the model and its migration together

Artisan (Laravel’s command tool) can make the model and its migration in one go. The -m flag means “also make a migration for it”.

php artisan make:model Product -m

This creates two files: app/Models/Product.php (the model) and a migration in database/migrations/ named like 2026_01_01_000000_create_products_table.php. The migration is where we describe the table’s columns.

Describe the columns in the migration

Open that new migration file and fill the up() method — this is the “build the table” instruction:

public function up(): void
{
    Schema::create('products', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->id();                          // auto-increment id (1, 2, 3...)
        $table->string('name');                // short text (the product name)
        $table->decimal('price', 8, 2);        // money: up to 8 digits, 2 after the dot
        $table->text('description')->nullable(); // long text, allowed to be empty
        $table->timestamps();                  // created_at + updated_at columns
    });
}

Line by line: $table->id() makes a unique auto-numbered id; string('name') is a normal text column; decimal('price', 8, 2) stores money safely with two decimal places; text('description')->nullable() is long text that is allowed to be empty (nullable); timestamps() adds the created_at and updated_at columns Laravel manages automatically.

Run the migration

This runs the instruction and actually creates the table in your database:

php artisan migrate

Let the model accept form data (one important line)

Open app/Models/Product.php and add a $fillable list. This tells Laravel which fields are allowed to be filled from a form — a safety feature called mass-assignment protection.

class Product extends Model
{
    protected $fillable = ['name', 'price', 'description'];
}

Without $fillable, Product::create() refuses to fill the fields (so a hacker cannot sneak in extra columns). With it, only name, price and description can be set from input — exactly the three we want.

Step 2 — make the controller (all 7 methods ready)

php artisan make:controller ProductController --resource

The --resource flag is the magic part: it creates app/Http/Controllers/ProductController.php already containing seven empty methods — index, create, store, show, edit, update, destroy — one for each CRUD action. We will fill them in the next lessons.

Step 3 — register all the routes with one line

Open routes/web.php and add these two lines:

use App\Http\Controllers\ProductController;

Route::resource('products', ProductController::class);

That single Route::resource line creates seven routes at once — one for every CRUD action, each pointing at the matching controller method. You did not have to write them one by one.

The 7 routes you just got (learn this table once)

You can see them for real with this command:

php artisan route:list --name=products