I had exactly the same issue on a Linux system with PHP 5.4.4.

My "solution" was to use composer directly:

composer create-project laravel/laravel lara50

where lara50 is the directory for the new application.

I have the same issue today.

My solution is developing a Xampp, Wamp replacement: http://laravel.io/forum/12-15-2014-introduce-laragon-mr-wamp-laravel-memcached-redis-on-windows-in-a-minute

With Laragon, you will work with Laravel on Windows without any trouble and develop modern apps with memcached and redis is easily

aren't there any solution for this error?

i have solved this by deleting created project

rmdir projectname

laravel new projectname

hop it helpes you!

I had the same issue

I solved this by updating the version of the laravel installer. I had the 1.1 version. So I changed the ~/.composer/composer.json file

{
    "require": {
        "laravel/installer": "^1.2"
    }
}

After that I run composer global update and everything work perfect!

I can able to debug and resolve this issue. It turns out to be a network issue(firewall) for me!

I observed the command “laravel new ” is working fine in my home network but I am getting the following error in office network,

PHP Warning:  ZipArchive::extractTo(): Invalid or unitialized Zip object in C:\Users\Rajesh Kumar Raj\AppData\Roaming\Composer\vendor\laravel\installer\src\NewCommand.php on line 157

So, I decided to debug the NewCommand.php file.

I noticed the following function is trying to download a zip file by calling the URL http://cabinet.laravel.com/latest.zip

protected function download($zipFile, $version = 'master')
{
    switch ($version) {
        case 'develop':
            $filename = 'latest-develop.zip';
            break;
        case 'master':
            $filename = 'latest.zip';
            break;
    }

    $response = (new Client)->get('http://cabinet.laravel.com/'.$filename);

    file_put_contents($zipFile, $response->getBody());

    return $this;
}

I tried typing the URL in my browser and I got a firewall error since the URL includes a .zip extension. So, I asked my network administrator to exclude check for this URL.

Then the project got created successfully without any issues.

So, the solution is, try accessing the URL (http://cabinet.laravel.com/latest.zip) from your browser. If it’s not working contact network admin or try executing the command from your home/mobile network. Hope this helps. Thank You.

Please note, I am using Composer version 1.5.2 and Laravel Installer Version 1.4