Tips to Optimise Laravel App Performance
Published On - November 20, 2023
Laravel Performance Enhancement is currently a hotly discussed topic, given the substantial influence the PHP framework wields in the web development landscape. Known and favoured for its exceptional backend development capabilities, Laravel stands out as one of the most widely used web development frameworks in 2023. It facilitates rapid application development through its robust MVC architecture, an extensive array of libraries, and a wealth of other features. Leveraging Laravel streamlines web development, resulting in reduced project development costs. Furthermore, you can fine-tune an existing Laravel application to heighten its performance, speed, and additional functionalities. Optimisation can boost the website visibility, enhance visitor engagement, expand the customer base, and ultimately boost revenue.
Why Should You Focus on Laravel App Performance Optimisation?
Laravel serves as a cornerstone for developing mission-critical business information applications, integral to a company’s success. These applications aid in supporting management decision-making processes and demand swiftness and efficiency. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses and Laravel programmers to direct their focus towards optimising their Laravel applications to enhance performance.
Businesses commonly employ Laravel to construct their information systems and augment overall performance. However, optimising the Laravel application is essential to ensure seamless execution and project deployment, particularly for management information systems that steer crucial business decisions.
Even if you have developed an exceptional Laravel application, there is always room for enhancement. Enhancing the performance of your Laravel application can yield various advantages, such as: –
Accelerated Business Growth: A more efficient Laravel application enhances effectiveness, expanding your reach and catalysing business growth.
Streamlined Development Environment: Optimised Laravel applications simplify coding tasks, enabling developers to save time, complete assignments more swiftly, and allocate fewer resources.
Enhanced Traffic Management: Leveraging the Laravel queue system equips your application to adeptly handle increased requests and effectively manage traffic surges as your site scales.
When you optimise Laravel performance, it’s good for the people using your website, it’s easier on the servers, and it can save you money. This is done by making the database queries more efficient, storing things temporarily in a smart way, and being careful about how the website uses its resources. When you speed up your website, it means pages load quickly. This also means your server can handle more visitors without needing expensive upgrades. Well-optimised websites can grow without becoming slow or unresponsive. Additionally, optimised websites are easier to take care of and fix because you deal with problems before they become major issues.
Tips for Laravel Performance Optimisation
Laravel has a handy tool called “Artisan Cache Config” to speed up performance. Here’s how to use it:
To cache the configuration, run this command:
PHP Artisan Config:cache
Once you’ve cached the configuration, any changes you make won’t take effect. If you need to update the configuration, just run the same command again. To clear the cached configuration, use this command:
PHP Artisan Config:clear
A word of caution: Avoid using the config cache command during local development, as you’ll likely be making frequent changes to your application’s settings.
You can also make your application even faster by using OPcache, which stores your PHP code so it doesn’t need to be recompiled every time.
Routes Caching:
Caching routes is a crucial optimisation for apps with lots of routes and settings. It’s like making a quick reference list to speed up Laravel. To do this, run:
PHP Artisan Route:cache
Remember, every time you change configuration or route files, you should rerun this command. Otherwise, Laravel will use the old cached information. To clear the cache, use this command:
PHP Artisan Route:clear
Removing Unused Services:
Laravel is all about making developers’ lives easier. When you start a Laravel project, it loads various service providers automatically from the config/app.php file to help you kickstart your work.
However, not all these services are always needed. Things like the View Service or Session Service might not be required for your specific project. Moreover, many developers like to customise Laravel’s settings to match their needs. So, it’s a good idea to disable the services you don’t need to boost Laravel’s performance.
Optimise Class Loading:
Laravel needs to include many files for its operations, even in a moderately complex app. To make this process faster, you can use a simple trick. You declare all the files that need to be included and then combine them into a single file. This way, instead of calling and loading many individual files, a single file is used for all inclusion requests. To do this, run the following command:
PHP Artisan Optimise–force
Reduce Plugin Usage:
Laravel offers a wide range of plugins to enhance functionality, but keep in mind that adding more plugins can lead to slower loading times due to increased libraries and files. To optimise your Laravel project, review the providers you’re loading via the config/app.php file and eliminate any unnecessary ones. Additionally, Laravel relies on Composer for managing components, so trimming down your composer.json file can reduce the number of dependencies that are loaded.
Profiling Your Database Queries:
If you’re curious about what happens behind the scenes when you execute a query on an Eloquent object, consider installing a profiler package. You can choose either https://github.com/loic-sharma/profiler, a port of Laravel 3’s profiler, or https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-debugbar, which integrates the generic PHP Debug Bar package. Once installed, these tools add a toolbar at the bottom of each rendered view, displaying the SQL queries issued on a given page and the memory used by your application during the request. This is a valuable way to identify potential performance issues, especially when working with smaller datasets in your local development database.
Reduce the Use of Libraries:
Laravel comes with many built-in libraries, but not all of them are needed for every project. Unnecessary libraries can slow down your application, making it less enjoyable for users. To improve performance, it’s a good idea to remove unused libraries from the config/app.php file. Also, take a look at the composer.json file to find and remove any libraries that your project doesn’t actually use.
Use JIT Compiler for Speed:
When PHP code is turned into bytecode, it can slow things down. The Zend engine handles this process, but it repeats every time your app runs, even though it only needs to happen once. To speed things up, developers use something called a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler. HHVM is a great JIT compiler that works well with Laravel.
Optimise Cache and Session:
For a faster Laravel application, it’s smart to keep the cache and session data in the computer’s memory (RAM). To do this, you can make changes in the app/config/session.php file for the session driver, and in the app/config/cache.php file for the cache driver. This helps your application work more quickly.
If your application needs a performance boost, consider implementing some or all of these recommendations to enhance its speed and efficiency. GetAProgrammer is a leading Laravel development company with a team of highly skilled Laravel developers. If you require any assistance or have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. We’re here to help.
