Class autoloading in Laravel 4.1 - laravel

Question

I am trying to use Laravel and have been following the official Laravel Eloquent documentation and multiple tutorials at credible sources tuts plus
I created a model inside app/models called Stack with a table in the database called stacks with a primary key column called id, as corresponding to Laravels defaults.
<?php (Stack.php)
class Stack extends Eloquent
{
}
$stacks = Stack::all();
However when I run this model I get the following error message.
Fatal error: Class 'Eloquent' not found in C:\www\laravelproject\app\models\Stack.php on line 4
Including the official documentation and the reputable tutorials, I have also watched 2 youtube tutorials and it seems like there is no additional autoloading/including/requiring required to be declared in any new defined model's, so I am assuming something else here maybe wrong.
Do I have to manually find all classes I must autoload? If so, why is this not written in the official documentation?
I downloaded the latest laravel.phar file directly from laravel and used a .bat file to call it. (Not via composer)
Some things I have checked/tried to fix the problem.
Eloquent directory does exist at vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent
Eloquent alias set in app/config/app.php. Default 'Eloquent' => 'Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model'
Directly extending class like \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model, error message the same but with \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model instead of just Eloquent
Tried to directly extend through all variations by navigating down the entire Laravel directory structure \vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent, then \laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent etc... etc...
Bit the bullet and decided to try the second official method, I installed composer and ran the command composer create-project laravel/laravel --prefer-dist, the command screen alerted me it was downloading files which was then all successful at 100%, then alerted me that a generated application key was set successfully. I then navigate to the new directory model/User.php and receive the exact same error message as when I did it with the previuos method(laravel.phar direct download).
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Make sure you are accessing the application from the correct 'entrance'.
Thus, accessing it from app/public/index.php.
The app/public/index.php file loads the autoloader.
<?php
/**
* Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
*
* #package Laravel
* #author Taylor Otwell <taylorotwell#gmail.com>
*/
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Register The Auto Loader
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Composer provides a convenient, automatically generated class loader
| for our application. We just need to utilize it! We'll require it
| into the script here so that we do not have to worry about the
| loading of any our classes "manually". Feels great to relax.
|
*/
require __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/autoload.php';

Answer 2

It's possible your is namespacing. Try adding the backslash before the class being extended.
class Stack extends \Eloquent
{
}

Answer 3

Make sure your are setting the Eloquent alias in the app config. (app/config/app.php)
Alternatively use the class directly. I believe it's: Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model
class Stack extends \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model {}