Set dynamic subdomains in Laravel Forge.

In Development

In routes/web.php paste the route group:

Route::domain('{user:slug}.' . config('app.base_url'))->group(function () {
    Route::get('/', UserController::class)->name('user.homepage');
});

base_url is added by the config() helper, do not use the env() method here, this could cause errors if you fired the command php artisan cache:clear

In this example you would need to add the column slug in your user migration.

The part of the route that adds the base_url should be added in config/app.php

'base_url' => env('BASE_URL', 'localhost'),

Set a base_url in the application .env file:

BASE_URL=myapp.test

Create a controller

In app/Http/Controllers/Users/UserController:

public function __invoke(User $user)
{
    return $user;
}

Now it can be tested in the browser with something like: /john-doe/myapp.test

It returns the corresponding user for that slug, if you do not have any user with the slug it will throw a 404 error.

You can add users with tinker and test it.

If all works it is time to make a deployment on forge, in this example I will use digital ocean as the server provider.

1 Create your project on forge:

Just write your domain and be sure to check allow wildcards.

2 Add your repo:

The full repo name comes from the github repo url (highlighted):

This convention from githubusername/repo goes in the repository field in forge:

3 Set your environment:

It needs to add the proper APP_URL value in the .env file on forge:

Here I add the BASE_URL and make the APP_URL dynamically, but both can also be written.

4 Set the domain in Digital Ocean:

You need to add some records:

• by default an A record for the base url @
• a CNAME record for www
• and a multi-domain A record with *. as a prefix

This is how your config should look like:

5 Create an API TOKEN

On the sidebar, go to API section and generate a new token, copy the token and save it for later

6 Configure the SSL certificate:

This step is particularly complicated because sometimes it takes a couple of hours to properly propagate the changes from Digital Ocean, this applies to any other provider.

Sometimes it works immediately, and sometimes takes a while and needs more time to get propagation, between 2 or 6 hours, but it can take more.

Thanks for reading!