Getting "Class 'app\Http\Controllers\Controller' not found" in Laravel 5.1

Question

I'm quite new to Laravel and when I am going through a tutorial when I encountered this error. This is my code in 'testController.php'.

<?php

namespace app\Http\Controllers;

use app\Http\Controllers\Controller;

class testController extends \app\Http\Controllers\Controller {

public function getAbout()
{
    return view('Learning.about') ;
}

public function getHome()
{
    return view('Learning.index');
}

}

And this is my 'routes.php'.

<?php
Route::get('test', [
   'as' => 'test', 
   'uses' => 'testController@getHome',
]);

Route::get('about', [
    'as' => 'about', 
    'uses' => 'testController@getAbout',
]);

I am getting this error:

Class 'app\Http\Controllers\Controller' not found

How can I fix this error?

Solution

Let's go through this step by step.

1. Check autoload directive on composer.json

Open composer.json file on your project root directory. Locate the the autoload section. It should be looking like this:

{
    ...
    "autoload": {
        "classmap": [
            "database"
        ],
        "psr-4": {
            "App\\": "app/"
        }
    },
}

Make sure you have this configuration under the psr-4 option:

"App\\": "app/"

This configuration tells the composer that we want to autoload all classes inside the app directory using psr-4 convention and places it under the App namespace.

2. Update your controller

First, your controller file name should be in CamelCase style. So we have to renamed it to TestController.php. Make sure that it's saved under app/Http/Controllers directory.

Now open your TestController.php file, we have to capitalize the namespace and class name like so:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;

class TestController extends Controller {
    public function getAbout()
    {
        return view('Learning.about') ;
    }

    public function getHome()
    {
        return view('Learning.index');
    }
}

Note that we also turn this line:

class testController extends \app\Http\Controllers\Controller

Into:

class TestController extends Controller

Since we already import the base Controller class, we don't have to specify the fully qualified name. We imported the Controller class using the use keyword:

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;

Save your TestController.php file.

3. Update your routes file

Now we have to update our app\Http\routes.php file. We just need to capitalize the controller name:

<?php

Route::get('test', ['uses' => 'TestController@getHome', 'as' => 'test']);

Route::get('about', ['uses' => 'TestController@getAbout', 'as' => 'about']);

4 Update your autoloader

Now the last thing to do. Open your terminal / command prompt. Go to your project directory and run the following command:

composer dump-autoload

This command will update the autoloader file (Read more here).

Now if you open up your browser and hit /test route, you should see the content from resources/views/Learning/index.blade.

Comments

[Alexey Mezenin]

You controller is in app\Http\Controllers, right?

[TheShark]

Yes it is in the Controllers, same with 'testController'.

[Alexey Mezenin]

Did you remove use app\Http\Controllers\Controller; line?

[TheShark]

Actually the Controller.php lies as 'App\Http\Controllers\Auth\Controller.php'. I don't think it makes any difference to the name space, do it ?

[TheShark]

Yes I did but didn't do any difference. By the way, I just noticed that my Controller.php has the path 'App\Http\Controllers\Auth\Controller.php'. Does it affect here to the code ?

[Saumya Rastogi]

I think the casing of letters differ according to different OS, like in mac it reacts to be right else in Ubuntu it reacts to be wrong, etc for other OS too

[Alexey Mezenin]

If you still getting app\.. message, then you didn't remove the line or didn't change namespace or extends part. The code above is from standard Laravel controller. Double check everything.