| Headline | 15 tips to enhance the performance of your Laravel Application |
| H2 | Importance of website speed |
| H2 | Why business should focus on laravel performance optimization |
| H2 | Key tips to improve your laravel web performance |
| H3 | Enhance artisan commands uses |
| H3 | Remove unused services |
| H3 | Minimize the use of laravel plugins |
| H3 | Profiling your queries |
| H3 | Apply eager loading to your data |
| H3 | Precompile assets |
| H3 | JIT compiler |
| H3 | Classmap optimization |
| H3 | Composer optimize autoload |
| H3 | Limit included libraries |
| H3 | Choose a fast cache and session driver |
| H3 | Use CDN for delivering static assets |
| H3 | Assets bundling |
| H3 | Assets minifying |
| H3 | Running the latest version of PHP development framework |
| H2 | Wrapping it up! |
Laravel is a one-stop solution for PHP development. It can help you build everything from complex APIs to simple web applications. The well-structured and beautiful codes of the laravel make it easy to create wonderful websites. Laravel framework also offers various sets of libraries and architecture.
However, if you want to craft an amazing website or an application then you should know how to tweak and tweet to utilize the maximum power of Laravel as well as enhance its performance too. I have written this article to shed some light on the laravel performance tips that can be easily implied by developers to get desired results.
Importance of website speed
The fact that if a website loads a few seconds faster contributes more to its performance is unbelievable for most people. But that’s the reality. Every second spend in loading your website is as valuable as a gold coin. If you want to hold on to your web visitors then every fraction of the second matters in a journey to convert them into clients.
Your first impression is the last. It is important how your business appears to the web visitors. From UI to conversations, every little thing can create a major impact on your website’s Google search rankings. If your visitors have to continuously face the lag in your web performance then they will become frustrated to use your website.
Why Businesses Should Focus on Laravel Performance Optimization
The set of libraries and the structure of the framework enables the Laravel developers to build powerful code with minimal effort. However, the code will still need to be optimized to ensure the smooth performance of your digital product under troubled circumstances after its deployment.
If you want your business website or an application to become successful then note that there are two key factors for it: performance and optimization. Enhancing the performance of web apps is very crucial for Laravel developers to meet the requirements of their customers. More often, the laravel framework is used to build business information systems which implicates the success of the laravel business apps. The management information system that helps you with decision-making needs to be high-performing and fast at any given time.
Key tips to improve your laravel web performance
As it has been established that you are using the laravel framework for your next web project which made you land here so that you can learn a few tactics to use the framework at its maximum potential. The best part – easily enables you to enhance your web performance with numerous options to choose from. So, let us dive into the details.
1. Enhance Artisan Command Uses
The artisan command of the laravel framework is a very useful and unique tool to boost your web performance. The most common setup is as follow:
- php artisan config: cache
- php artisan route: cache
- php artisan optimize – – force
When Laravel developers create many different kinds of routes and configurations, these commands can come in handy. You just have to build a simple cache like a plain array which will make a website load faster as it will load cache instead of the real object.
But if you are making any changes in your route files or config then you should re-run the commands. Because if you don’t do that then the laravel framework will not imply your changes and will keep loading the files from the cache only.
It is also necessary that you cache the user data, settings, and locations. This will limit the SQL queries. Also ensure that when the data changes, the cache is invalidated. Also, for your database, you should have good indexes. Laravel developers always cache their configs, views, and routes. To forge your deploy script, add the following commands:
- php artisan config: clear
- php artisan route: cache
- PHP artisan view: clear
It is also recommended that you install or set up the PHP OPcache. It caches your PHP code so that you won’t have to recompile them.
2. Remove Unused Service
It is better to disable the unused services in the config file. That will restrain all the unnecessary services from loading every time you open a config file. All you have to do is just comment on the unused service provider in config/app.php. You need to ensure that your comment does not break the entire functionality of the application.
3. Minimize Use of Laravel Plugins
Laravel framework comes with a wide range of plugin options that could easily increase the functionality of your web app. And when the functionality increases, you need to download more libraries and files to load in the app. This will eventually slow down your application.
You need to check out which provider you are loading through your config/app.php file. From there, you can cut down all the necessary plugins for your app. This PHP framework consists of a composer that manages all the components. Hence you can use it to shut down your composer.json file to reduce the loading dependencies.
4. Profiling Your Queries
If you install a profiler package then you will come to know about what happens behind the scene when you execute a query on an Eloquent object. To integrate your generic PHP Debug Bar package, you need to choose from the following:
- https://github.com/loic-sharma/profiler – a port profiler of Laravel 3.
- https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel – a debug bar
Once you install anyone among the both, it allows you to add a toolbar at the bottom of every rendered view. This will show all the SQL queries issued on any given page along with the quantity of the memory used in a request to your application.
This is considered to be one of the best practices to identify the bottlenecks in your PHP code. This always works when you work with small sets of data in the local development database.
5. Apply “Eager Loading” to Your Data
To map out the object models supported by the database tables laravel used Eloquent ORM. A Laravel developer can map out the object structure in a few simple files. All the relevant database interactions required for the CRUD (create, retrieve, update, delete) operations are managed through Eloquent only. And when Eloquent is doing it, it utilizes an approach called lazy loading.
Therefore, Eloquent will never retrieve any relevant data until it is specifically referenced somewhere else in the PHP code from the laravel framework. Though it is not harmful to have a query or two on your detail page, multiple queries can definitely decrease the performance of a web app for offering relevant data in return to all the queries.
You could also use eager loading to set up your queries. They will recover all object models associated as a part of the initial query. They are also available for immediate use.
6. Precompile Assets
For code maintenance, you must manage all your assets in separate files like routes and configuration. However, the same practice is not necessary for terms of production. Laravel framework has a few artisan commands you can run that help you with this before you deploy your site:
- php artisan optimize
- php artisan config: cache
- php artisan route: cache
These commands of the laravel framework can compile all the frequently used classes into a single file for quicker reference. For faster loading, all configuration files and routes can be combined into a single file. Laravel allows you to add your own classes into optimization which are not already added by default. The increase in performance will be very little but every little bit helps.
7. JIT Compiler
It is not possible for computers to understand PHP natively. And you too can’t compile the PHP to bytecode and have machines running them. Therefore, this task is accomplished using a middleman like the Zend engine. It can interpret your PHP files for you and then it executes the C routines accordingly.
This is a very slow process as every time your server runs through a PHP file, it has to convert it into tokens. The conversion and interpretation are done by the AST parser. Even if it gets the same result, it has to compile every time.
But if you want to speed up your app then you first need to compile it all at once and then run it every time. That’s how a JIT compiler does the work. One of the most recommended JIT compilers for Laravel is HHVM. It is created and used by Facebook. Other IT firms like Wikipedia, Etsy, and more use it too.
8. Classmap Optimization
As laravel is normally calling multiple files to include requests, even a mid-level laravel web application will be flooded with many files. A simple tactic you can use in such a situation is to declare all the files included to include requests and combine them all in a single file. Hence, for any given include request, the server needs to call and load only a single file. And that will be accomplished using the command – php artisan optimize – – force.
9. Composer Optimize Autoload
You can not only use the composer to scan the application but also to create a one-on-one association of all the classes and files available in an app. You can do it using the command – composer dumpautoload -o.
10. Limit Included Laravel Libraries
One of the most advantageous factors of using the laravel web app development framework is that it offers a wide range of libraries to include in your application. Though this is good, the only downside is that due to the presence of many libraries, the app can experience high-level drag which will slow down its performance.
So, it is necessary that you review all the libraries and relevant data in your code. You should be looking for the libraries that can be removed without having any adverse effects on the web application. You can easily remove them from config/app.php and boost the performance of your laravel app. You can also have a quick look at composer.json.
11. Choose a Fast Cache and Session driver
For the most optimum level of performance tuning, laravel developers opt to store the cache and other session sections in the RAM. Memcached is believed to be one of the best and fastest cache and session drivers to improve the web performance for laravel 5.
With the help of a driver key located in app/config/session.php, developers can easily change the session driver. Similarly, the cache driver is changed using the driver key located at app/config/cache.php.
12. Use CDN for Delivering Static Assets
Another laravel performance tip is a simple tweak to enhance laravel performance for an app is to load the static assets files through a CDN server instead of loading them directly from the server that hosts all the files.
In any given application, CDN can characterize the static resource like JS, CSS, HTML, pictures, recordings, liveliness, and many more. All this relevant information is stored on a CDN server of a web page so that when a visitor requests certain information on the website, they can be served with the answers immediately. This is used to serve the visitors in real-time.
13. Assets Bundling
All the Laravel applications come with an in-built Laravel Mix that uses common CSS and Javascript preprocessors to provide an effective API. This defines the webpack build for your PHP apps. You can also use it to compile your app assets like a script, styles, and more. This practice is used effectively to link several spreadsheets together in a single file like it is some sort of chain or a series.
- mix.styles([
- ‘public/css/vendor/normalize.css’,
- ‘public/css/styles.css’
- ], ‘public/css/all.css’);
This will change all your all.css containing styles into normalize.css and styles.css. Similarly, developers can also use all.css in the HTML instead of using both normalize.css and styles.css individually.
This practice is adopted to decrease the number of HTTP requests to retrieve every file individually. But now you can retrieve any file in just one request instead of two. And as a result that will be a minimal rate of growth in your web speed.
14. Assets minifying
If a Laravel developer compiles all the assets in a single place then the size of the file will be gigantic. As a result, this proposed compilation won’t be of any benefit to your laravel app. So, if you want to solve this problem then you need to minify all the assets with the help of Laravel Mix – $ npm run production.
This will not only run all the mix tasks but will also ensure that the assets are minified to get ready for production. All the assets will now be in a smaller size so they will be retrieved faster which will eventually boost the performance of the laravel application.
15. Running the latest version of the PHP development framework
Every version of a PHP framework is launched with a significant amount of improvements which enhances the Laravel web performance. So, make sure that you are using or your laravel app is running on the latest version of PHP. This will arm your app to tap into the potential for maximized performance optimization and data security.
The flawless working of the app will result in enhanced user experience which will eventually lead to increased conversion rates and business growth. All thanks to the latest and advanced functionalities of the new PHP platform. You can change or update your existing platform to the latest version of the PHP framework just within a click. Some are also bound to automatic updates.
Wrapping it up!
After reading this article, now you have got a few tricks up in your sleeves that will be useful to increase the laravel web app performance. However, speaking practically – one would need vast technical knowledge and a lot of time to imply these laravel performance tips.
You have options – either you can do it all for yourself if you have all the know-how and a lot of time or you can hire a laravel development company or laravel developers to do the work for you. The choice is yours. But first, you should know what you need to do for what you want to achieve.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article, tell me which tip you liked the most. You can also suggest more in the comments section below.
