Laravel Octane : Scale Up and Expedite Your Web Application Project

Laravel has become the most popular choice for developing small-scale web apps among developers. However, when it came to develop large scale web applications or scaling the existing Laravel applications, developers didn’t  prefer it for developing large-scale applications. Realising this issue, Laravel has launched the open-source package Laravel Octane. This package uses high-performing servers, i.e. Swoole or RoadRunner that will play a key role in boosting the application performance.

In addition, the package comes with a bunch of new features that will be the future of Laravel web development. This article covers more about  Octane that you must know in brief. 

Before moving ahead, let’s explore – 

What is Laravel Octane?

Laravel Octane is an open-source application package mainly used to boost the performance of Laravel applications. This performance booster package works through the state of PHP programming.

Unlike other application installing packages, Laravel Octane depends on an array of built-in libraries that allows developers to add extra features to their apps.

Moreover, this Laravel Octane package can be installed and run with either RoadRunner or Swoole. Both of these application servers are considered high-performing and highly compatible servers. This will boost the app’s performance in many ways.

How does Laravel Octane work?

Laravel, a PHP web application framework, is known for delivering high performance, but the issue mainly pointed out by many developers is slowness. This doesn’t mean that Laravel is slow and takes much time to deliver the best performance. Rather, it is at the very least and not the best in the lists of lightning fast aspects. 

But the arrival of Octane cuts down the issue.

Here’s How. 

Laravel Octane caches the bootstrapped framework into the RAM during the initial request. It will be easy and quick enough to respond to further requests by referring to the already cached framework in RAM.  

This saves much time and improves the app’s performance.

Fascinating Features Of Laravel Octane

One of the biggest things about Laravel Octane is that it can run with Swoole. Here are a few fascinating features of Laravel Octane that will add more weight to the developer’s choice.

1. Octane Workers

As the name suggests, Laravel Octane supports multiple workers. So you need to specify how many workers you want per CPU core initially. This completes the task quicker through concurrent tasks and increases the performance by a large margin.

Command for setting works for tasks: php artisan octane: start –workers=4 –task-workers=6

2. Intervals or Ticks

 Ticks or intervals are nothing by the time gap for a task to be executed repeatedly.

Octane::tick(‘simple-ticker’, fn () => ray(‘Ticking…’))

->seconds(10);

3. Octane Cache

It is a drive powered by Swoole Table which allows you to write more than 2 million operations per second. Also, it allows you to set a cache interval to refresh the app data.

use Illuminate\Support\Str;

 Cache::store(‘octane’)->interval(‘random’, function () {

   return Str::random(10);

}, seconds: 5);

4. Octane Tables

Octane tables are extremely fast and boost the performance of the server. This allows task operations and data retrieval to be carried out much faster. Also, it allows you to reconfigure the table rows via the Octane config file.

Installing Laravel Octane

Having Laravel Octane will conserve resources more than the conventional Laravel apps. By doing so, it supercharges the performance of the Laravel apps. 

Looking forward to having Laravel for your app development process, this section guides you perfectly.

Laravel Octane is a package; it can be installed just like a normal dependency installation procedure. However, to install Laravel Octane, you would need PHP version 8.0+. 

Okay, let’s get started with the action of installing Laravel Octane.

Step 1: Installing Laravel using commands via Composer Package Manager

• composer create-project laravel/laravel laravel-octane composer require laravel/octane
• php artisan octane: install

Using these commands allows you to download the complete package of Laravel Octain.

Once it has been done, use the command to install the package. The installation code will generate a config file: octain.php.

Step 2: Installing Application Servers

Once the installation process is completed, you need to choose the right application server either RoadRunner or Swoole for your project.

• To install Roadrunner: Use this command ‘composer require spiral/roadrunner’ after replacing the ‘server’ key with ‘roadrunner’ in the config file of installed Laravel.
• To install Swoole: Swoole is a PHP extension that is more powerful than Roadrunner. Use this command ‘pecl install swoole’.

Step 3: Running Laravel Octane

Pick any one application server from the installed Swoole or Roadrunner for running Laravel Octane.

Use this command to launch the Laravel Octane ‘php artisan octane: start’.

Let’s Wrap It Up

Laravel Octane is an exceptional product from the Laravel team. It enhances the application’s performance in many ways. Both Swoole and RoadRunner are better for Laravel. Octane prefers anyone based on your app requirements and leverages the power of Octane.

If you are a web developer looking to superpower your app with high performance, then without any hesitation, go for the power of Octane-powered Laravel. It will be the best option.  

---