Using Inspectr with Laravel PHP

Laravel is a popular PHP framework for building web applications and APIs. Inspectr lets you inspect, debug, and securely expose your Laravel endpoints for testing or integration with third-party services.

This guide walks you through using Inspectr as a proxy in front of a Laravel app.

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Prerequisites

• PHP 8.1+
• Laravel installed (laravel new myapp or via Composer composer global require laravel/installer)
• Inspectr installed (Install guide →)

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Step 1: Start Your Laravel App

If you haven’t already, create and start a Laravel application:

laravel new myapp
cd myapp
npm install && npm run build
composer run dev # php artisan serve --port=8000

Laravel will be available at:

http://localhost:8000

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Step 2: Start Inspectr as a Proxy

Run Inspectr to forward incoming requests to your Laravel app:

inspectr --backend=http://localhost:8000

Now you can access your Laravel routes via Inspectr at http://localhost:8080.

For example:

curl http://localhost:8080/api/user

Inspectr will:

• Log and inspect the request
• Forward it to your Laravel backend
• Show the full request/response in the Inspectr App UI (http://localhost:4004)

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Optional: Expose Laravel Publicly

Use Inspectr’s public ingress mode to receive traffic from external services (e.g., webhooks):

inspectr \
  --backend=http://localhost:8000 \
  --expose \
  --channel=laravel-demo \
  --channel-code=laravel123

Your Laravel API will now be available at:

https://laravel-demo.in-spectr.dev

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Step 3: Debug and Replay

In the Inspectr App:

• Watch live traffic from frontend clients or third-party systems
• Replay webhook requests directly to Laravel
• See request payloads, headers, methods, and status codes

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Summary

Inspectr makes Laravel development and integration easier by:

• Acting as a transparent proxy in front of your app
• Allowing safe, temporary public exposure
• Providing a UI for inspection and request replay

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