System Requirements

Before installing NutriFit, ensure your development environment meets the following requirements.

PHP Requirements

NutriFit requires PHP 8.2 or higher. The application is built on Laravel 12, which requires modern PHP features.

Required PHP Extensions

The following PHP extensions must be enabled:

PDO Extensions

pdo_sqlite (for development)
pdo_mysql (for production)

Core Extensions

mbstring
tokenizer
xml
ctype

Data Extensions

json
bcmath
fileinfo

Optional

gd or imagick (for image processing)
zip (for package management)

Verify PHP Extensions

Run this command to check if required extensions are enabled:

php -m | grep -E '(pdo|mbstring|tokenizer|xml|ctype|json|bcmath|fileinfo)'

Node.js & Package Manager

For frontend asset compilation and development:

Package	Minimum Version	Purpose
Node.js	18.x or higher	JavaScript runtime
npm	Included with Node.js	Package manager

Alternatively, you can use Yarn or pnpm as your package manager.

Verify Node.js Installation

node --version  # Should return v18.x or higher
npm --version   # Should return 9.x or higher

Database Requirements

NutriFit supports two database systems:

SQLite (Development)

SQLite is included with PHP by default and requires no additional setup. Perfect for local development.

Version: Any recent version
Setup: Automatically created on first migration
File location: database/database.sqlite

MySQL (Production)

For production environments, MySQL 8.0+ is strongly recommended for performance and scalability.

Version: 8.0 or higher
Character set: UTF-8 (utf8mb4)
Collation: utf8mb4_unicode_ci

Package Manager

Composer

PHP dependency management requires Composer 2.x or higher.

composer --version  # Should return 2.x

If not installed, download from getcomposer.org.

Version Control

Git

Required for cloning the repository and version management:

git --version  # Should return 2.x or higher

Additional Tools

Laravel Sail (Optional)

Docker-based development environment for Laravel. Useful if you don’t want to install PHP locally.

Mailtrap (Development)

Email testing service for development. Free tier available at mailtrap.io.