Are you looking for successful ways to speed up Laravel performance while working on your project? You’ve come to the right place!
Laravel is a popular open-source PHP framework that’s known for its robust security and simple yet sophisticated coding architecture. It’s a great choice for building cutting-edge web applications capable of driving revenue and propelling businesses forward. Still, Laravel performance can get slow if you don’t use the right optimization techniques.
Luckily, there are numerous hacks to maximize Laravel performance. We’ve rounded up a list of the most effective optimization tips that you can follow.
1. Route Caching
Route caching is a helpful feature for apps with lots of routes. It saves you time by grouping routes into one command, so your website loads faster. Laravel retrieves the routes from the pre-compiled cache rather than starting from scratch for each user.
Use this command to cache the routing data required:
php artisan route:cache
Remember to run it every time you make structural changes to your website. To clear the cache, use:
php artisan route:clear
2. Optimize Composer
Laravel uses Composer to manage dependencies. When you install Composer, it loads dev dependencies by default, but they slow down your website once it's live. To remove dev dependencies, use the command:
composer install --prefer-dist --no-dev -o
This optimizes the autoloader and boosts performance while keeping necessary dependencies intact. Just be careful not to remove runtime dependencies that your website needs to function properly.
3. Reduce Autoloaded Services
Laravel aims to make development easy. It loads many service providers to help you get started, but you won't need all of them. For instance, REST APIs don't need View or Session Service Providers.
To improve your app's speed, you can disable unnecessary services (e.g., Pagination, Translation, Auth). Be careful not to remove essential services, though. Double-check before making changes.
4. Use Artisan Commands and Cache Effectively
Artisan is a powerful command-line tool in Laravel that automates tasks and testing. To optimize your app's performance, you can use Artisan commands for caching:
• config:cache compiles all config values
• view:cache stores Blade templates
• and cache:clear saves all data manually cached.
Don't execute these commands during local development; remember to clear the cache when you upload new code. Use config:clear, view:clear, and cache:clear to clear the cache.
5. Reduce Package Usage
Laravel has a large community that creates and releases new packages and versions regularly. You must add them to your composer.json file to use them, and Laravel will install them with their dependencies.
However, not all packages have the same purpose or performance impact. Some packages have many dependencies, making your app slower. Before adding a package, review its dependencies carefully.
6. Upgrade to the Latest Version of PHP
Updating your PHP version to the latest release is crucial for security and performance reasons. Outdated versions are no longer maintained, making them vulnerable to attacks, and their performance deteriorates over time.
By upgrading to the latest version, you can benefit from security patches, bug fixes, and performance improvements such as faster request execution and inheritance cache. Kinsta recommends using the latest major PHP version for optimal speed and efficiency.
7. Use Queues
Offloading tasks to a queue job can significantly speed up your Laravel application. Laravel supports a variety of queue drivers such as IronMQ, Redis, Amazon SQS, and Beanstalkd. It additionally includes a built-in queue worker that can be executed using the following command:
php artisan queue:work
You can add a new job to the queue using this method:
Queue::push('SendEmail', array('message' => $message));
Use the method below via Carbon if you want to defer the execution of one of the queued jobs. For example, say you want to schedule a job that sends an email to a client 10 minutes after they create an account:
$date = Carbon::now()->addMinutes(10);
Queue::later($date, 'SendEmail@send', array('message' => $message));
Summary
Laravel is a fast-growing PHP framework, and there are lots of tutorials available for all kinds of users to learn Laravel regardless of their knowledge level.
If you’re a Laravel developer, you can feel confident that by using the methods outlined above, you’ll notice a performance improvement and be able to maintain a smooth-running application.
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