Laravel Octane, the latest open-source package of Laravel got immensely popular after it’s release on 12th, 2021, by Taylor Otwell. This better, improved and bigger version of Laravel eases the request handling and bootup process effectively. Laravel Octane is also known for its promptness and has the potential to rule the future of Laravel web application development. Get a detailed knowledge of Laravel octane here.

What is Laravel Octane?

Laravel denotes an open-source package that boosts the Laravel app performance using stateful PHP programming. It also can be called a wrapper behind the Swoole ( a PHP extension that provides different interesting features like fibers, web sockets after installation), RoadRunner, and different high-performance servers. 

Laravel also has a range of new features and libraries that provide the best level performance and compatibility. This open-source Laravel package has 3.3K stars and 234 Forks on GitHub.  

Understanding of stateful and stateless

Now that you know the definition of Laravel Octane, let’s understand the difference between the Stateful and Stateless conditions of the framework. 

Stateful servers are servers that act together with a client or user and are dependent in nature. It stores user information and actively remembers data as if the info file is opened throughout the entire process. Additionally, the stateful server ensures a faster user-side process with other operations like opening and closing information files and removing files that are not needed. 

On the other hand, stateless servers are independent servers that store user information from a client’s or user’s request. It uses the data by opening the file and requesting a query to the server and lastly automatically closes the entire session. It is a simplified process as it utilizes the information only when needed and is up-to-date. 

Why is Laravel Octane Stateful and What Makes It Faster?

Laravel Octane uses the stateful server as it is faster and more effective. In general, the traditional Laravel process develops PHP work for each individual incoming request. It means the Laravel process starts an individual PHP process that needs preparation prior to serving the request. 

Put in context, the PHP developer working with laravel needs to boot the framework along with the entire service. It demands further registration of the services within the container that are boosted by the providers. Moving on, the request is not constant and goes on through a list of middleware classes, hitting the controller, and finally rendering the view that opens up the main page. 

The Laravel Octane helps the HTTP request to share the same boosted framework among the servers. It means that once the framework is booted, any request made after that is also automatically booted by the server. 

Octane boosts a new framework for every request and automatically decreases the workload. Hence, Laravel Octane is a faster and more traditional form of framework. Also, it is recognized as a stateful framework because of its fast performance, flexibility, and high boosting in servers like Swoole and Road Runner. 

Laravel Octane- Work Process

On top of the traditional Laravel and PHP versions above 8.0, the Octane is created. It is not a separate language but an addition to the Laravel framework. It works faster with the help of a stateful framework.

Also, it develops a standard process for each incoming opening of pages. It means it starts up an individual PHP process for boosting and preparing the framework before serving that one request. 

The Laravel Octane work process is simple. It performs all its functions on the servers via Swoole and RoadRunner, which redirects the traditional Apache and Nginx for incoming traffic. 

Octane AutoCannon: 

Autocannon is an HTTP benchmarking tool that evaluates the overall performance of web applications. The testing with autocannon can be performed at every stage of development to understand what better performance it offers. Additionally, it is also capable of generating lots of traffic even while running a single multi-core CPU. 

Octane Open Swoole

Octane Open Swoole is a reliable software development kit for developing scalable and worthy web applications. Open Swoole is like the fork of the framework that concerns more about the internal conflicts within the production community. It was initiated in 2021 to support the community of Swoole. 

Octane RoadRunner 

Octane RoadRunner is a high-performing, open-source, serviceable PHP application server. It is efficient and effective in replacing the traditional Nginx setup. More or less, it delivers robust performance and flexibility in the app. 

It is the Swoole and RodRunner that uses the work processes for all requests and boosts the framework. It also uses the bootstrapped version that collectively makes your application perform faster. 

The Octane Laravel catches the bootstrapped Laravel framework in RAM by utilizing the first request. Afterward, the requests use the already bootstrapped framework from RAM. It does not read the whole files from the hard disk. Doing so makes the application faster and boosts its performance to a significant extent. 

Features of Laravel Octane

Octane Workers

Incoming requests get received after the creation of PHP workers. Laravel octane allows to create several workers from the beginning and enables quicker receiving of servers. Also, there are options for initializing the CPU core. Working with multiple servers ensures requests will be received by the other workers quickly if one is occupied with any task. Swoole and RoadRunner enhance the performance by huge margins in this way.

Octane Cache 

Swoole tables run Octane. The Cache driver comes with the capacity to write up to 2 million operations each second that upgrades the existing caching system. This in-memory cache flush out the data after the server restarts and you need to activate the cache by this command.

Concurrent Tasks

You can perform several tasks simultaneously which saves the developers’ efforts and time. Tasks workers can do this easily that are dependant on the set numbers with octane:start command. Task workers help in separating the web servers from the web requests. You have options to defer the task for task processing. Command tasks are available on the Swoole only.

Octane Tables

Octane Swoole are fast and provide a boosted server performance. Every worker on a server can access the swoole tables that also offers quicker data retrieval. The only issue is you will lose all data after the server restarts. 

Why Scale your application using Laravel Octane? 

Improved Performance– The performance of your Laravel app gets up to 30% quicker using this open-source package. Due to the disc reads elimination and other causes, overheads get activated when the framework boots up the response request and Laravel can manage several connections promptly that cause increased traffic.

Cost-Effectiveness- Another reason to embrace this open-source framework is budget-friendliness. Getting the best result at an affordable rate is possible with Laravel.

Faster in Nature– Laravel was designed to offer improved and optimized Laravel apps. It becomes possible by reducing request and response time by caching the example of the Laravel dependency container in the RAM memory. 

Things to consider before Scaling your application using Laravel Octane

Install the PHP Versions– If you are finalizing the use of Octane, the first thing to adopt is the installation of PHP versions. It might look easy but in reality, there are several ups and downs. 

One of the severe problems is the working of numerous websites with Laravel using the older version of it. The older versions do not support the Octane and hence need to be updated with the latest version to perform further processing. 

Similarly, many product owners or businesses whether experienced or fresher are not familiar with the stateful framework. It again creates problems and demands efforts to understand it before they finalize the implementation of Laravel Octane within the web application. 

However, scaling web applications with Laravel Octane is thus daunting and requires proper knowledge. Choose the best Laravel Development Company and talk with the experts to be sure. 

Refactoring Implications 

Applications using session state or some middleware types need changes for Octane usage. Additionally, support for the Swoole coroutine-based sessions is required that removes the incompatible middleware of Swoole. This is not the end as some changes are important for the dependency Injection Container. 

Code handling changes 

In traditional Laravel app development, a start, and stop of the entire process are required whenever a change is made. On the contrary, you get a convenient mode to monitor the tour codebase automatically and restart your Octane server without any manual interventions. 

Not only that, but it also allows you to make easy developments by altering the codes in the applications. The developers can restart the whole application instance every time the codebase is updated. 

How does Laravel Octane differ from Laravel Apache? 

From the developer Tylor Otwell thought, the introduction of Apache and Octane resulted in zero Lumen requirements for new projects. Now you ask what Lumen is. Well, Lumen is a Laravel-based micro-framework that intentionally devoid a few components to make the process faster. 

However, Laravel Octane already provides a fast better option compared to Lumen. Describing the statement a few benchmarks are given for you. 

In the first benchmark, three overall modes are used:

• Laravel with Octane 
• Laravel with Apache Web Server 
• Laravel with in-built server

Also utilized the ‘wrk’ tool in the given configuration: 

wrk -tl -c50 URL 

The results received from this benchmark:

Requests Handled in 10-Seconds

• 2667
• 1210
• 705

Requests Per Second (RPS)

• 266 rps
• 121 rps
• 70 rps 

So, it is clear from the benchmark metrics that Laravel Octane is far better and faster compared to the Apache server. 

Conclusion 

So, scaling your Laravel Application with Laravel Octane is a great option. Being a decent framework, it brings significant improvements in terms of performance in comparison to traditional Laravel application development. So, if you are looking to improve your application performance choose Laravel Development Company for using the Laravel Octane. Also, before taking the final call talk with the experts and discuss and grow your knowledge.

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