If you've been around on the general Laravel-interested Internet over the last month or two, or if you attended Laracon US or Laracon EU, you've probably already heard of Laravel Spark. If you haven't, check out Taylor's introductory video from Laracon EU.

I've held off on writing about it until now, because it has changed a lot over the span of its development. It's released as an Alpha now, so the API has solidified some... but it'll still change quite a bit between now and the release.

WARNING: This article is about an alpha release. This release is not intended to show the final API or feature set. Spark will change often before its release, and I won't always catch every change immediately. If you find any ways this guide has become out-of-date as Spark changes between Alpha and final release, please let me know here. If you hate something and think it's the worst idea you've ever seen, chill. This is just an alpha and there's no promise anything will stay the way it is right now. If you want a quick, TL;DR version of how to install Spark, check out Laravel News' quick writeup. This is, instead, a deep-dive into how it works and what it does. I'll be writing a more general introduction to Spark once it's actually released, so beware: this is a bit of a deeper dive, for people geeky enough to want to look at an alpha release.