Thanks Abhi, that was exactly the solution.

I had tried simple to write <?php ?> at the beginning and end, but then Laravel was giving me the unexpected '}' error, which I went searching through the internet and it gave the solution that I tried to do above.

So @section('content') only works if there is @yield('content') calling it? That makes sense to me. Is this correct? And thank you once more

abhiyanp said:

The @section tag assumes that this will be rendered within some master layout file. (say master.blade.php)

What you need is a layout file that includes your doctypes, headers etc. Then have a

@yield('content')

in the location that you want the content to be output.

Then add at the top of your index.blade.php

@extends('master') //assuming master.blade.php is your master file and is located directly within the views directory

That should do the trick

Blade doesn't need the php tags in it - blade files are essentially compiled into raw php equivalents (they are stored inside /app/views and exectuded from there) - so adding our own php tags breaks it.

And yes, foreach @section('section_name') is rendered using the corresponding @yield('section_name') directive in the main layout file. There are some nuances and edge cases of course but each section needs to be yielded somewhere.