Using Laravel Octane for High-Performance Applications: A Practical Guide

Laravel Octane supercharges your application’s performance by leveraging Swoole and RoadRunner. In this guide, I’ll walk you through setting up Octane, optimizing your app, and avoiding common pitfalls—all based on real-world projects.

• Laravel Octane
• Swoole
• Performance

Why Laravel Octane?

Laravel Octane is a game-changer for applications requiring high concurrency and low latency. By using Swoole or RoadRunner, Octane keeps your application running in memory, eliminating the overhead of bootstrapping Laravel on every request. This results in:

• Faster response times: Requests are handled in milliseconds.
• Lower server costs: Fewer servers are needed to handle the same load.
• Real-time capabilities: WebSockets and event-driven tasks become trivial.

In this guide, I’ll cover installation, configuration, and practical tips for deploying Octane in production.

Prerequisites

• Laravel 8+
• PHP 8.0+
• Swoole or RoadRunner
• Linux server (for production)

Installation & Setup

Step 1: Install Octane

Install Laravel Octane via Composer:

composer require laravel/octane
      

Publish the configuration file:

php artisan octane:install
      

Choose your server (Swoole or RoadRunner) and configure the octane config file.

Configuration

Key Settings

In config/octane.php, configure:

• Server: 'swoole' or 'roadrunner'
• Workers: Set based on CPU cores (e.g., 'workers' => 4)
• Max Requests: Prevent memory leaks (e.g., 'max_requests' => 500)

Example Swoole configuration:

'swoole' => [
    'host' => '0.0.0.0',
    'port' => 8000,
    'workers' => 4,
    'max_requests' => 500,
],
      

Optimization Tips

Use Octane Cache Leverage Octane’s in-memory cache for frequently accessed data.

Avoid Blocking Calls Use async drivers for HTTP requests, queues, and database operations.

Monitor Memory Usage Set max_requests to prevent memory bloat.

Performance Benchmarks

Octane can reduce response times by 50-90% compared to traditional Laravel. Below are real-world benchmarks from a production API:

Endpoint	Traditional Laravel (ms)	Laravel Octane (ms)
/api/users	120	25
/api/posts	180	35

Deployment

Using Supervisor

For production, use Supervisor to manage the Octane process:

[program:octane]
command=php artisan octane:start --server=swoole --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8000
user=www-data
autostart=true
autorestart=true
      

Restart Supervisor after adding the config:

sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update
      

Final Thoughts

Laravel Octane is a powerful tool for high-performance applications, but it requires careful configuration and monitoring. Start with a staging environment, test thoroughly, and gradually roll out to production. For questions or feedback, email me at dubeyd2001@gmail.com.

Email Me

Deepak Dubey • Laravel Octane • High-Performance PHP