How to Use Laravel with React for Building Modern Web Apps

Beginners often ask: “Which stack impresses clients and gets the job done fast?” Laravel handles complex backend tasks like user log in, data storage, and security without writing everything from scratch. React makes the UI look smooth, fast, and modern—what clients love. Together, they solve the biggest pain: building apps quickly that look good and work well. With 70% of companies now using frontend-backend combos, Laravel + React is a smart choice. In this article, we’ll cover ‘how to use Laravel with React’, ‘how to connect React with Laravel’, and why clients prefer them together. Plus, how you can build full projects confidently. If you’re short on time or expertise, you can also choose to hire Laravel developers to get a head start with scalable backend systems.

Behind the Scenes & On the Screen – Laravel Meets React

To make the overview of Laravel and React simpler to grasp, imagine you’re building a house. Laravel is like the solid foundation and plumbing, handling all the behind-the-scenes work. So, for an App, it will handle user logins, databases, and security. It’s a powerful PHP framework with features like routing, ORM (Eloquent and built-in authentication. Thai makes backend development faster and safer.

On the other hand, React is like the front porch and interior design. It would be controlling what users see and interact with. Built by Meta, React helps create fast, interactive UIs using reusable components. If you’re looking to speed up development or need expertise for component-based UI, you may consider hiring React JS developers for efficient and visually engaging interfaces.

When you connect React to Laravel, you’re delegating them different responsibilities:

• Laravel manages the logic and data, React handles the interface. This separation makes your app easier to scale, debug, and update. For example, you can tweak the frontend without touching backend code—saving time and avoiding errors.
• Clients also love our Laravel with React tutorial, because the Laravel with React combo delivers both performance and visual polish.
• For beginners, it’s a perfect way to learn modern development.
• For clients, it means faster delivery and more reliable web apps

Compare Laravel and React to Other Popular Stacks:

How to Use Laravel with React:

Consider a situation where your client wants a modern website that looks great, works fast and handles things like user logins, payments and dashboards.

• Laravel takes care of the heavy backend lifting, like securely storing data, managing users, and creating APIs.
• React, on the other hand, builds the interactive, sleek frontend that users love. Together, they make your app both powerful and beautiful. In fact, many cross-platform mobile apps follow the same pattern—often developed with hire React Native developers in mind to ensure seamless native performance across devices.

Step 1: Installing Laravel – The Backend Foundation

To start, you’ll need to install Composer. This is nothing but a PHP package manager. Once that’s done, open your terminal and run this code: composer create-project Laravel/Laravel my-project.

This creates a new Laravel app with everything preconfigured that has basic routing, database setup, and security included. Laravel is popular because it saves time and makes code easy to manage.

Step 2: Setting Up React – The Dynamic Frontend

Now for the front end. First, ensure that you have Node.js and npm installed properly. You have two ways to use React with Laravel:

• Option A: Integrate React Directly Using Laravel Mix
  Laravel Mix is already included. Run the code – npm install && npm install react react-dom
  Then, create React components inside resources/js/components, and Laravel Mix will compile them into your project using Webpack.
• Option B: Create a Separate React App (Decoupled Architecture)
  Run: npx create-react-app frontend in a new folder.

This creates a separate React app that communicates with Laravel via APIs. This step is suitable for larger, scalable projects.

Read More: Laravel vs NodeJS

Creating APIs in Laravel:

Let’s break it down simply. In modern apps, the frontend (like React) talks to the backend (like Laravel) using something called RESTful APIs.

Suppose API is a cafe waiter—you (React) place an order. The waiter (API) brings the data from the kitchen (Laravel). These APIs send and receive data using HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.

• In Laravel, creating an API is easy. First, define a route in routes/api.php
• This one line auto-generates multiple routes for actions like fetching all posts or deleting one.
• Then, in your PostController, you create methods like index(), store(), and destroy() to handle each action.

In Laravel, routes act as traffic signs guiding requests. For example, Route::get(‘/users’, [UserController::class, ‘index’]); tells Laravel: when someone visits /users, show the list from UserController@index. Controllers are like workers handling tasks. Inside UserController, the index() method might fetch users from the database.

Laravel makes things even easier with Route::apiResource(‘users’, UserController::class). This single line automatically creates 7 RESTful routes (index, show, store, update, destroy, etc.)—ideal for APIs.

For a user management dashboard, instead of writing each route manually, apiResource generates everything you need for create, read, update and delete (CRUD). Laravel even handles route-model binding, validation and JSON responses automatically.

Read More: How Can Laravel Development Company Help You Increase Your Revenue?

Developer Tips: Performance, Debugging & Scalability

React Side:

• Lazy load big components with React.lazy() and Suspense
• Use React.memo for child components

Laravel Side:

• Reduce DB queries with eager loading: User::with(‘posts’)->get()
• Use php artisan config:cache and route:cache in production
• Leverage Laravel’s rate limiting to protect APIs

How to Connect React with Laravel – Connecting Frontend to Backend

Step 1: Setting up Axios (or Fetch API)

To connect React to Laravel, you’ll need a tool like Axios or the built-in Fetch API. Axios is popular because it simplifies error handling and offers additional features. You would need to install Axios in your React project. Next, you have to set it up to send requests to your Laravel API.

For Example, Once Axios is set up, it allows React to communicate with Laravel, like fetching data from the Laravel backend. You can fetch user information from your Laravel backend and display it in your React component. You would set this up using Axios or Fetch within a React component’s lifecycle, such as when the component mounts.

Step 2: Handling CORS Issues:

When your React app (running on one server) tries to fetch data from the Laravel backend (on another server), you may face CORS. To make it simpler, it is called Cross-Origin Resource Sharing issues. This happens because modern browsers restrict requests made to different domains.

Solution – To solve CORS issues in Laravel, you’ll need to allow your React app’s domain. This can be done by configuring CORS in Laravel. You’ll use a CORS package like Fruitcake/Laravel-cors and update the configuration file. It’s done to ensure that your Laravel API accepts requests from the domain where your React app is hosted.

Step 3: React and Laravel Integration

Once Axios is set up and CORS is configured, your React app will be able to send requests (like fetching or posting data) to your Laravel backend smoothly. This setup enables the two parts of your app—React for the user interface and Laravel for the backend API.

CTA:

Ready to Build the Future of Web Apps? Read this before you start anything – In 2025, React remains the top choice for frontend development, with 81.8% of JavaScript developers using it, according to the State of JS 2022 survey . On the backend, Laravel continues to be a leading PHP framework, favored for its elegant syntax and robust features.

Combining React and Laravel allows you to create dynamic Apps – whether it is a real-time dashboard, an e-commerce platform or a mobile app backend. Don’t just read—come and build it!

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