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01Apr

Laravel Performance Optimization : Guide to a Perfect Laravel  Development  

If you are a PHP developer, or aspire to be one, you might be familiar with Laravel. It has managed to secure its position as one of the best PHP framework among the top most used PHP Frameworks for Web Application Development. Apart from several robust features that it offers, the most talked about among-st developers as well as businesses is the ability to control Laravel performance optimization.

Before deep diving into how-about, it would be necessary to look upon the need for Laravel Performance Optimization when it comes to developing business focused applications.

No matter whatever domain you are serving, performance and speed are much required to keep your clients satisfied and happy. Thus, a Laravel Web Developer should know how to use the ability of the framework to its fullest.

Below are the few helpful steps that can be followed in Laravel Development to gain more control over performance:

Caching and Artisan Command :

Caching is a true friend to Laravel developer when it comes to optimizing speed and performance. There are premade Artisan commands that can be utilized by the Laravel Developer when lots of configuration and routes files are employed.

Few of the helpful commands include:

  1. php artisan route:cache
  2. php artisan config:cache
  3. php artisan optimize –force

Although, you will need to clear the cache to reflect any new changes by using the commands

  1. php artisan config:clear
  2. php artisan route:clear

Remove unused services :

From the point of Laravel performance optimization, it is wise to disable the several unused services from the config files and commenting the service providers within config/app.php

Prefer Eager Loading over Lazy Loading :

As a Laravel web developer, you must understand the cost of every single query. As the Laravel uses Eloquent ORM to handle database, it follows “lazy loading”, and does not loads any related data until referenced elsewhere in the code. With eager loading, Eloquent retrieves all related object models in response to the initial query.

Profile Queries :

In order to monitor performance during the Laravel development, we need to inspect different queries, how they are running and how can they be optimized. Profiler packages, such as Debugbar, can be utilized to see what queries are invoked and run in each page.

JIT Compiler for Laravel Development :

A middlemen, like Zend Compiler, is used that interprets the PHP files and executes relevant C routines. Each time the application is executed, this process gets repeated, which makes the app slow. To avoid this, JIT (Just-In-Time) compilers, such as HHVM by Facebook. are deployed to contribute towards performance.

Minifying and Bundling assets :

Laravel Mix proves to be an effective tool to define Webpack build for PHP applications. It help to concatenate multiple assets like CSS into a single filing, thus reducing multiple HTTP request to single, which helps towards our goal of Laravel Performance Optimization.

Avoiding (Minimizing) plugins for Laravel Development :

This might seems something strange, but with extra functionality, comes added load over the application. Use only when it is necessary and remove the extra plugins that cost you performance of your application.

Precompiling Assets :

Laravel Developers often keep separate files with distributed code to help easy and maintainable development. But during the production, efficiency is required. To gain this, few of the Laravel commands can be used during deployment:

  1. php artisan optimize
  2. php artisan config:cache
  3. php artisan route:cache

Redis or Database cache over File Cache :

Redis can be used for cache and sessions to offer more control over performance. It is an in-memory data structure store, that can be used as a database and cache, or even as a message broker.

Apart from the above mentioned steps and tricks, several other things can be done such as migrating to HTTP 2 instead of HTTP 1.1, using CDN for delivering assets, upgrading to PHP 7, using libraries like Pusher for message notifications or even rewriting the application to SPA (Single Page Application).

The Laravel Framework- 5.2 And 5.4

Laravel primarily focuses on developing web applications that follow the MVC or model-view-controller architectural pattern thus being a free, open-source PHP web app framework. A quick transition in the versions have taken place and again with the new version from 5.2 to 5.4.

Unlike Laravel 5.1, Laravel 5.2 introduces some new features in its bucket such as :-

  • Multiple authentication driver support
  • Implicit model binding
  • Simplified Eloquent global scopes
  • Opt-in authentication scaffolding
  • Middleware groups
  • Rate limiting middleware
  • Array validation improvements.

Auth Scaffolding : – Auth scaffolding feature involves conducive , smoothing way to scaffold the authentication views for your front-end by Simply executing the make:auth command on your terminal.

Implicit Model Binding : – Implicit model binding provides an easy way to induce significant models precisely into your routes and controllers.

Middleware Groups : – Middleware groups permits numerous route middleware grouping under a single, convenient key, resultant of which is, several middleware routes at once. Case in point, while building a web UI and an API within the same application this approach is a right fit. Grouping of the session and CSRF routes into a web group, and perhaps the rate limiter in the API group can be done.

Rate Limiting : – Rate limiting feature has been involved with the framework, granting the access to smoothly limit the number of requests that a given IP address can make to a route over a specified number of minutes.

Array Validation : – Laravel 5.2 introduces another new feature of array validation wherein validating array form input fields is a comparatively easy task.

Eloquent Global Scope Improvements : – Global Eloquent scopes seems to be convoluted in prior versions of Laravel and subjected to ample of bugs to implement. On the contrary, Laravel 5.2, global query scopes only require you to implement a single, simple method apply.

The technology is moving at a rapid pace as to leverage more improvised version of the framework resultant of which is the launch of Laravel 5.4!

Let’s have a quick glimpse of some more add-on features in the framework as compared to its version 5.2.

Laravel Dusk -: Lravel 5.4 introduces “dusk” feature which is based on BrowserKit that makes use of ChromeDriver and the Facebook Php-web driver, substituting Symfony BrowserKit, resultant of which is , Dusk support Javascript, making it an end-to-end testing tool. Well, the most crucial benefit of dusk is, it renders easy helping methods such as login for a smooth user instance.

Real Time Facades: In Laravel’s previous version, it was a bickering responsibility to create your own facades, whereas the new versions, easily converts your application class into a facade. The new versions performs on-demand task so that you can get rid of countless onlookers.

Blade Components and Slots: Blade components and slots feature have not involved much of variations and seems to be quite similar to the earlier version. Mostly it provides a flexible and simpler way to create templates. Developers familiar with Vue.js will not find much difference.

Markdown Mail and Notification: Laravel 5.4 involves pre-built markdown templates and components, important for mail and notifications, permitting developers to develop responsive HTML emails. Case in point; while sending email, integrating Markdown with Blade components permits fetching maximum flexibility.

Laravel Mix: Another interesting feature of Laravel 5.4 is Elixir API followed by Laravel Mix. Introduced for the first time in the updates, this feature is endorsed for building tool wrapper of choice. It is developed in Webpack, instead of Gulp.

Redis Cluster Support: Redis connections is another feature in the bucket which is defined to a number of single hosts and multiple clusters within the same application, as it is not required to cluster in single host in the same application.

Collections: In the latest update “collection” delivers short-cuts or say “higher order messages”, and we can perform common actions on them. Moreover, the latest Laravel 5.4 offers a host of features to provide ease for application development.

With all its excellent features, Laravel has transcended most of the prominent frameworks of PHP. More and more businesses have actualized that growing with Laravel is the excellent option. It could help boost profitability and of course increase the return on investment. Moreover, the framework helps an organization, heedless of its size and location to stay ahead of the competition. Create attractive and interactive websites with the Laravel PHP framework. The demand of Laravel framework is on the rise due to its implausible features. Also, Laravel provides comprehensive community support as well.

As a Laravel Web Developer, all these will help you to  attain the much required Laravel Performance Optimization and thus ensure reliability and speed to your application.

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