Laravel application development is an easy and seamless way to create applications. However, it is not the best approach if you look to optimize your application’s performance.
Laravel has its own set of drawbacks that can severely slow down the performance of an application if not appropriately addressed.
While there are many ways to deal with this, we’ll take a look at how to optimize Laravel application development and get a step-by-step guide towards optimizing performance using the new buzzwords and technologies such as GraphQL and Serverless Computing.
Laravel Performance Optimization Importance
In Laravel Application Development, performance optimization is critically important. It can be done with a well-thought-out project layout and proper coding techniques. But it is more than just making an application fast.
It goes hand in hand with providing good quality services to your clients, ensuring that resources are used effectively and even promoting a positive image for your company.
Therefore, we must optimize our applications according to expected usage patterns and client expectations. This can often mean making hard decisions about functionality or even cutting functionality entirely if it negatively impacts site speed.
We’ll start by looking at how to analyze our current application to identify any issues before looking at specific optimizations that we can make both server-side and client-side.
Why Specialize in Laravel Performance Optimization?
Even though developers in various fields have many different approaches to coding, most Laravel Development companies will tell you that optimizing code is one area where there’s a broad consensus.
With so many other moving parts when running an app at scale—security scalability and general usability—most developers won’t look at much beyond their front-end performance and database query optimization.
But those tasks only scratch the surface. Because of that, we strongly recommend finding a developer who is part of any number of Laravel performance optimization organizations.
Use the latest version of Laravel
Laravel is an open-source laravel the most popular PHP web framework that was first released in 2011. Creat by Taylor Otwell, Laravel has been improv and maintain by a group of developers known as Laracasts.
At its core, Laravel’s primary focus is on simplicity, which helps developers to get their apps up and running as quickly as possible. In terms of usability, it allows developers to write clean code without worrying about configuration—especially with auto-loading capabilities that make plumbing unnecessary.
Laravel also offers functionality in routing, events and queuing, which are necessary for app development and to improve your productivity.
Change your PHP.ini settings.
There are a number of settings that you can change in your php.ini file to optimize Laravel’s performance, particularly memory usage. You’ll need to do some research and benchmarking on your own server, but these settings have been useful in my environment.
Get a good host
This is one of those low-effort, high-return things that we rarely think about doing. This can make performance optimization difficult when you have a third party involved in your infrastructure.
To ensure that your client has a great hosting experience and fast page load times, research what hosts offer native PHP caching. Ask them if they use cPanel since most of these programs are much easier to manage from a design perspective.
Cache your routes on their way out
By default, Laravel will cache a route when it’s loaded from a browser—but not on its way out. This means that every time you hit reload on your browser, it won’t clear previous queries. To fix that, you can use Laravel’s cache with routes to make sure any time someone refreshes or moves through your website with their back button. They still get appropriately rout. (And they don’t have to load anything else).
You can set up caching using Laravel’s built-in command-line tool Artisan with: `$ PHP artisan route: cache or in your terminal/command line with PHP artisan route: cache if you are using Windows 10.
Use an Opcode cache
One of our favourite ways to improve Laravel application performance is implementing an opcode cache. This can be done through tools like APC, eAccelerator, or Memcached.
To get more out of your Laravel app, you should consider using an opcode cache such as APC. Although configuring and using an opcode cache isn’t difficult (and can made easier with a caching wrapper), it requires some planning and consideration to realize meaningful benefits.
Profile your application using XHProf
First, you will need to profile your application using XHProf. You should visit the XHProf website to get start with profiling on your local machine.
After visiting their website you will be directed to download a zip file that includes everything you need to begin profiling your Laravel application locally.
Leverage view caching
One of the fastest and easiest ways to improve your application‘s performance is leveraging view caching. Laravel allows you to turn on view caching using a simple configuration option in your .env file. Set APP_DEBUG=true, which depends on caching and set your cache directory as storage/framework/views/.
Doing so allows Laravel to not recompile views when they are access twice (or more) within a given time frame. Enabling view caching can greatly reduce load times in your application if it is being access over a network connection (examples of network connections include 3G and 4G mobile networks). This is especially true if you’re frequently accessing data in database tables instead of APIs or filesystems.
Leverage database queries sparingly via query caching
One of Laravel’s many impressive features is its support for caching database queries. Using query caching, you can significantly reduce your server load and decrease page loading times by storing pre-computed results in your cache. Query caching can be enabled within an existing Eloquent model, or you can use Laravel’s native Cache facade to cache any uncache query.
Consider Redis or even APC Cache as an alternative to Memcached
Memcached is a great, easy-to-use caching solution. However, it has some limitations compared to newer solutions like Redis or APC Cache, which can increase your application’s speed and stability. If you’re serious about optimizing your Laravel performance, you should consider one of these alternatives as an alternative to Memcached.
Add a CDN on top if necessary
If you want your web application to be super fast and load at lightning speed, implementing a CDN on top of your Laravel application is one of the best ways. A CDN or Content Delivery Network will help improve performance by moving most of your static files (such as JS, CSS, images etc.) to a remote server. Afterwards, clients can grab those files from that location instead of hitting their own webserver again and again.
Conclusion
Laravel is a free and open-source PHP web framework that helps build a web applications. One of its highlights is that it allows developers to write less code and still do more things. If you want to develop a next-generation application, Laravel development services can your best bet.
