Laravel Octane to Scale your Application in 2024

Laravel Octane is the latest Laravel open-source package released by Taylor Otwell in 2021, and ever since then, this technology has become the most preferred Laravel package among developers.

The programmers enjoy every feature of it and turn it into user-friendly functionalities, and for that very reason, Laravel Octane has also become quite popular among business persons. If you are a business person and about to hire Laravel developers to scale your web applications, you must learn more about Laravel Octane so that to have a healthy discussion with them about your app optimization as per your business objectives.

What is Laravel Octane?

If you go by definition, Laravel Octane is an open-source package used to boost Laravel applications’ performances through stateful php programming. The package comes with built-in libraries and loads of new features to power up Laravel applications in 2024 and make them work well surpassing users’ expectations. Laravel for web development has been one of the most popular platforms among developers as well as project owners for several reasons such as faster development, rich features, and user-friendly performance.

Here are some of the glorifying stats about Laravel by TechJury:

•  More than 35% of the total php frameworks used worldwide are Laravel.
•  Laravel is behind 1,723,068 live and historical websites on the World Wide Web.
• Laravel powers 743,470 websites out of 33.7 million websites that use php.
• Corporate giants such as BBC, Pfizer, TourRadar, and MyRank use Laravel to keep their websites ahead of their peers.
• Laravel is estimated to make 5.7 million dollars a year.

How does Laravel Octane function?

As stated, Laravel Octane is a new feature that makes Laravel applications run faster and tackle more concurrent user requests. Octane performs this through a forking process model, shared memory, and efficient request handling. Let us briefly see how these components work and how they power up the Laravel application’s performance.

A forking process model

It is a method to create multiple copies of a process sharing the same code and resources which reduces the overhead of initiating a new process for each request and, therefore, the processes reuse the same database connections and cache instances. Laravel Octane, through the forking process model, creates multiple workers to tackle multiple requests.

Shared memory

Shared memory is another technique used to allow different processes to access the same data without copying it. Hence, the Laravel platformbrings down memory usage and improves data transfer speed among processes. The shared memory is also useful to store the app state like views, configuration, routes, and service providers. Hence, programmers don’t need to reload the app state for each request.

Request handling

It is the process of fetching, processing, and responding to HTTP requests. Laravel Octane augments the request handling through Swoole or RoadRunner as the fundamental server. These servers are engineered to tackle high-performance web apps, and they can also take up thousands of requests per second.

What makes Laravel Octane faster and more stateful?

Laravel Octane allows you to run any Laravel application faster and more efficiently. With its high-performing servers (Swoole and RoadRunner), it can take up thousands of concurrent requests with no reloading of the framework or app bootstrapping needed.

These features and functionalities of Laravel Octane assure that the application state is preserved across all the requests and, therefore, it gives you more flexibility and control over business logic and data.

Some of the benefits of using Laravel Octane for the business perspectives are:

• Faster response time
•  Lower memory usage
• Improved performance
•  Seamless integration with other Laravel features
•  Simple installation and configuration, minimal existing codebase changes
•  Multiple workers and load-balancing support

Why Octane is the best for Laravel application scaling?

The demand for web applications in 2024 has grown and so has the need for scaling and performance optimization. That’s where Laravel Octane comes in: Octane helps you achieve augmented performance andcost-effectiveness while inducing quicker and highly responsive web experiences. Here are the factors that make Octane the best option for Laravel app scaling in 2024:

Improved performance

One of the main advantages of Octane is that it improves the performance of Laravel applications. Octane reduces the bootstrapping overhead of the framework for every request by keeping the application in memory while reusing the same workers for multiple requests. Ultimately, the apps have faster response times and lower resource consumption. According to the official announcement, Octane can boost the performance of Laravel applications by up to 10 times.

Cost-effectiveness

Another business benefit of Octane is that it can help app owners save money on hosting and infrastructure costs. Laravel apps when built with Octane reduce the number of servers one needs to run because every server tackles more requests with less CPU and memory usage. Octane also goes easy with Laravel Vapor, a serverless platform again to boost the applications on demand.

Quicker and highly responsive

Laravel Octane delivers quicker and highly responsive web experiences to the end users. The technology supports features like event-driven coding, long-running requests, and WebSockets to build real-time and interactive Laravel web apps. Octane utilizes the best features of stability and paceof Swoole and RoadRunner to support HTTP/2, HTTP/3, and HTTPS protocolsto create ultramodern and engaging Laravel web applications.

Features of Laravel Octane

Laravel Octane boosts the functioning of customized apps by keeping them in the stack and taking up several requests with a single PHP process. Here are some of the features of Laravel Octane that make it a game-changer for web development in 2024.

Octane workers

These are PHP processes to handle incoming requests from the server. Managed by Swoole or RoadRunner to take up the communication with web servers, they distribute the requests to the workers. Octane workers easily tackle multiple requests concurrently which reduces the overhead and latency of Laravel apps, making them faster and accurately responsive.

Octane cache

Octane cache is a feature to cache the application’s configuration, data, routes, and views in memory. It has built-in caching mechanisms to enable applications to stay independent of reading the files or parse them for every request. Again, as a result, the app scaling in 2024 is much faster and more responsive. Octane cache also ropes in cache invalidation to update any cached data while making changes to the Laravel application’s files.

Concurrent tasks

Concurrent tasks run asynchronous tasks in corresponding with the main request such as sending an email, dispatching a job, or firing an event and you don’t need to wait for them to finish. This significantly improves the UX of your application, the success driving factor in 2024.

Zero downtime deployment

With zero downtime deployment, one can update the Laravel application’s code without interjecting the service or missing any request. Laravel Octane has two strategies for zero downtime deployment: graceful reload and hot reload. The former waits for all the current requests to complete before reloading the workers using the new code; on the other hand, the latter reloads the workers immediately with the new code while keeping the old workers in action until they complete their present requests.

Octane tables

Octane tables allowapps to store and share data across Octane workers with the help of Swoole’s or RoadRunner’s shared memory tables. This feature stores counters, flags, queues, or other data that need to be accessed or modified by multiple workers. Octane tables are fast and atomic enough totake up concurrent reads.

The prerequisites of Laravel application scaling with Octane

If you want your Laravel apps to be highly scalable, Octane is a powerful tool to consider. However, before you can enjoy the benefits of Laravel Octane, you need to make sure that your app meets some prerequisites and follows some best practices.

1. Install php versions

One of the first things you need to do is to install the PHP version to match the one required by Octane. Depending on the server you choose, Swoole or RoadRunner, you could need a different php version.

2. Refactor implications

The next step is to refactor your application code to make it compatible with Octane. This means that you need to avoid using any global or static state in your code, such as global variables, static properties, or singleton patterns.

3. Code handling

Finally, you need to consider how you handle your code changes and deployments when using Octane. Since Octane runs your application in a persistent process, any code changes that you make will not take effect until you restart the Octane server.

Laravel Octane Vs. Vapor Vs. Apache

One should not get confused among three different php technologies – Laravel Octane, Laravel Vapor, and Laravel Apache. Here is a simple table to glance at each of them and their functionalities or features –

Time to leverage Laravel Octane to scale your apps

Prismetric uses contemporary tools and technologies to upgrade and scale web applications. If you are in search of a laravel development company that masters refining and augmenting business apps to meet the present demands of the market in 2024, we are the answer. Contact us to scale your app with Laravel Octane in 2024 and stay competitive in the industry by providing the optimum user experience to your customers.

Mitesh Gosai

He loves challenges and adept at finding tech-solutions that complement business ideas. Working in the capacity of Project Manager at Prismetric he strives to leave no chance for glitches in his implementation. He incorporates his extensive experience in his writings about new gadgets, tech stories, updates and innovations in technology, management tips, and inspiring app technology related information.