Category: Laravel

Laracon 2024: Mateus Guimaraes: Behind Laravel Octane

Posted on by Andrew Minion

Mateus Guimaraes brought a deep-dive through how Laravel Octane can massively improve performance of your apps.

Main benefits:

  • Reduced latency by eliminating the framework boot step on every request
  • Increased performance
  • Lower cost by reducing CPU usage

Aaron Francis asked a followup question about which driver is best:

None of the apps I’m currently working on need this level of performance (yet) but I’d be interested to try Octane to see how it could improve performance even now.

One more note: Octane can run multiple processes concurrently to save time during a request:

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use Laravel\Octane\Facades\Octane;

Route:: get('foo', function () {
    Octane::concurrently([
        fn () => DB::select('SELECT * WHERE SLEEP(1)'),
        fn () => DB::select('SELECT * WHERE SLEEP(1)'),
        fn () => DB::select('SELECT * WHERE SLEEP(1)'),
    ]);

    return ['foo' => 'bar'];
});

Laracon 2024: Philo Hermans: Livewire Beyond the Basics

Posted on by Andrew Minion

Philo Hermans went deep into Livewire optimizations in his talk. A couple of key takeaways:

If your Livewire component calls an action that doesn’t need to re-render anything, you can skip re-rendering by using the [Renderless] attribute. I think I can find some immediate use cases for this.

For high-traffic apps with read replica databases, the sticky option can help guarantee consistency immediately after writes.

Optimistic UIs can improve perceived efficiency: use wire:loading.remove to immediately remove an element before the server round-trip has completed, so the app feels more snappy. I think I could also improve some UIs using this trick.

Laracon 2024: Luke Downing: Lessons From the Framework

Posted on by Andrew Minion

Luke Downing gave a great talk about lessons you can learn from the framework.

He took us line-by-line through routes/web.php (from the app structure prior to Laravel 11), explaining all the things you can learn from that file:

  • Authorization: the app has users, allows registration and login, etc. and uses one of the Laravel authentication starter kits
  • Model relationships: nested resource routes indicate that other models belong to users, and while the public can view models, only users can edit them
  • and more

I’ve found the routes files to be extremely helpful in my day-to-day development. In fact, I usually add the routes file as a pinned tab in VS Code so it’s always open (depending on the app, sometimes web.php, sometimes api.php, and sometimes both).

Some quotes from the talk:

Ordinary and obvious, not clever and convoluted.

The more obvious and clear your code is, the easier it is to spot and prevent bugs, and the simpler it is to come back to it later.

Know the rules and when to break them.

e.g., using facades for simpler testing, instead of the “right way” of dependency injection

Laracon 2024: Nuno Maduro: Pest 3

Posted on by Andrew Minion

In his talk, Nuno Maduro announced Pest v3, with several new features and no breaking changes.

I know this is pretty exciting to a lot of people, but personally I prefer PHPUnit for several reasons:

  • Better IDE support
    • e.g., in a Pest test, $this->assertDatabaseHas(…) runs without errors, but the IDE thinks it’s invalid because the test file doesn’t extend the base TestCase or inherit any of the parent methods
    • I personally like the discoverability of using a class, as my IDE will suggest available methods.
    • I do think there are some Pest helpers that I haven’t fully used, so those might help alleviate these gripes.
    • Yes, I know that Pest can be used as the test runner, and still use PHPUnit-style classes.
  • Improved VS Code test integration
    • This is the best VS Code extension I’ve found to work with tests in a PHP project. It shows all the tests along with pass/fail results in the sidebar, and I use the keyboard shortcut to run tests all the time.
    • The extension only works with PHPUnit tests, not Pest.
    • However, the upcoming first-party Laravel VS Code extension might change that…

These new features did catch my eye though:

  • Architecture presets: ensure your code follows best practices and conventions; read more here and see the plugin here
  • Mutation testing: let Pest modify parts of your code to ensure it causes failing tests, to ensure your tests are covering what you think they are; see the plugin here

I’ll be taking a look to see if I can use some of the underlying packages with PHPUnit.

All in all, seems like a solid upgrade, but it just doesn’t excite me all that much.

Easily Deduplicate Jobs Using Laravel Queues

Posted on by Andrew Minion

TL:DR; use a delayed dispatch plus the ShouldBeUnique contract on your job, and let the framework deduplicate it for you!

Picture this scenario: you receive webhooks from a third-party service that you need to handle somehow in your application. Due to multiple changes at the third party, you may receive multiple webhooks about the same resource within a short timeframe (2 minutes, for example), but you only want to process it a single time.

You could add a processed_at timestamp and track when you last processed the resource, and bypass additional processing using that.

Or you could combine several tools the Laravel framework already provides:

  1. Determine the expected timeframe for multiple updates
    • e.g., if somebody is manually updating multiple fields and you get a webhook for each change, estimate how long a user might be working before you want to process the changes
  2. Add a delay when you dispatch the job to cover that expected timeframe, plus a little bit extra: SomeJob::dispatch($data)->delay(now()->addMinutes(3))
  3. Add the ShouldBeUnique interface to your job
  4. Add the uniqueId() method to your job with a unique ID or some other key that will be used to find a match
  5. Voila!

Now when you receive an incoming webhook, your app will delay the processing for 3 minutes, and if there is already a job on the queue for that unique ID, the framework will not dispatch a second job.

One additional thing to consider: within that job, you may wish to perform an API call to retrieve the current state of the resource, since the dispatched job will contain the state as of the first webhook, not the most recent.

<?php

// somewhere in your app

SomeJob::dispatch($data)->delay(
    now()->addMinutes(3)
);

<?php
 
use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldBeUnique;
 
class SomeJob implements ShouldQueue, ShouldBeUnique
{
    /**
     * Get the unique ID for the job.
     */
    public function uniqueId(): string
    {
        return $this->data->id;
    }

    ...
}

Fatal Errors with PHPUnit Test Suite: Laravel 10, PHPUnit 10, ParaTest 7

Posted on by Andrew Minion

TL;DR: PHPUnit 10.5.32 is broken, 10.5.31 works.

After a composer update one one of my projects today, I started getting this error when running my test suite: Fatal error: Uncaught Illuminate\Contracts\Container\BindingResolutionException: Target [Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler] is not instantiable.

All the tests passed just fine…no errors or warnings. At the end of the test execution output, it displayed this stacktrace:

> php artisan test --parallel --stop-on-failure --stop-on-error
ParaTest v7.4.5 upon PHPUnit 10.5.32 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

Processes:     10
Runtime:       PHP 8.3.10
Configuration: /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/phpunit.xml

.......................................................SS....   61 / 1014 (  6%)
.............................................................  122 / 1014 ( 12%)
.............................................................  183 / 1014 ( 18%)
.............................................................  244 / 1014 ( 24%)
.............................................................  305 / 1014 ( 30%)
.............................................................  366 / 1014 ( 36%)
..................................S...I......................  427 / 1014 ( 42%)
.............................................................  488 / 1014 ( 48%)
.............................................................  549 / 1014 ( 54%)
.............................................................  610 / 1014 ( 60%)
.............................................................  671 / 1014 ( 66%)
.............................................................  732 / 1014 ( 72%)
.............................................................  793 / 1014 ( 78%)
.............................................................  854 / 1014 ( 84%)
.............................................................  915 / 1014 ( 90%)
.........................I...................................  976 / 1014 ( 96%)
......................................                        1014 / 1014 (100%)

Time: 02:04.815, Memory: 70.50 MB

OK, but there were issues!
Tests: 1014, Assertions: 6462, Skipped: 3, Incomplete: 2.

Fatal error: Uncaught Illuminate\Contracts\Container\BindingResolutionException: Target [Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler] is not instantiable. in /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php on line 1126

Illuminate\Contracts\Container\BindingResolutionException: Target [Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler] is not instantiable. in /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php on line 1126

Call Stack:
  125.2423   77506896   1. Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\HandleExceptions->Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\{closure:/Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:254-256}() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:0
  125.2423   77507336   2. Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\HandleExceptions->handleException() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:255
  125.2423   77470472   3. Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\HandleExceptions->getExceptionHandler() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:183
  125.2423   77470472   4. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->make() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:288
  125.2423   77470472   5. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->make() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Application.php:946
  125.2423   77470472   6. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->resolve() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:731
  125.2423   77470472   7. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->resolve() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Application.php:961
  125.2423   77470528   8. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->build() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:795
  125.2423   77470624   9. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->notInstantiable() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:921


Fatal error: Uncaught Illuminate\Contracts\Container\BindingResolutionException: Target [Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler] is not instantiable. in /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php on line 1126

Illuminate\Contracts\Container\BindingResolutionException: Target [Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler] is not instantiable. in /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php on line 1126

Call Stack:
  125.2457   77507224   1. Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\HandleExceptions->Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\{closure:/Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:254-256}() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:0
  125.2457   77507448   2. Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\HandleExceptions->handleShutdown() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:255
  125.2460   77519232   3. Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\HandleExceptions->handleException() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:231
  125.2460   77519232   4. Illuminate\Foundation\Bootstrap\HandleExceptions->getExceptionHandler() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:183
  125.2460   77519232   5. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->make() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/HandleExceptions.php:288
  125.2460   77519232   6. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->make() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Application.php:946
  125.2460   77519232   7. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->resolve() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:731
  125.2460   77519232   8. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->resolve() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Application.php:961
  125.2460   77519232   9. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->build() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:795
  125.2460   77519328  10. Illuminate\Foundation\Application->notInstantiable() /Users/andrewminion/Sites/site-domain/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:921

After some trial-and-error, I narrowed it down to PHPUnit 10.5.32. Something in the changeset from 10.5.31 to 10.5.32 caused this error.

This also happens only when running tests in parallel (php artisan test --parallel), suggesting to me that perhaps the PHPUnit output changed in some way that ParaTest was not expecting.

My fix, at least for now, is to stick with PHPUnit 10.5.31, and hopefully an imminent upgrade to Laravel 11 and PHPUnit 11 will resolve it.

Laravel Testing Tip: Reset UUID Creation

Posted on by Andrew Minion

TL;DR: if you call Str::createUuidsUsing(…) in a test method, don’t forget to call Str::createUuidsNormally() later in that same method (or the tearDown method), or the rest of your test suite will continue to use that same UUID.

Laravel’s string helper provides a nice interface for generating uuids, as well as a nice way to fake the UUIDs during a test:

While this is very useful, I expected that it would reset between tests, similar to Queue::fake(), Http::fake(), etc.

However, because of how the Str helper generates UUIDs, whatever you provide will be used for the rest of the test run. If you have other tests or app code that expects a unique UUID each time Str::uuid() is used, you may get unexpected results.

There are a couple of options to work around this:

  1. After running the code that needs a UUID, call Str::createUuidsNormally() to reset the Str helper.
  2. If you don’t actually need the value of the UUID for testing, you can wrap your code in the freezeUuids() method instead. Once your code in the callback finishes running, the framework will call createUuidsNormally() to reset everything for you:

Laravel Tip: Generating Signed URLs with Ignored Parameters

Posted on by Andrew Minion

TL;DR: don’t use ignored URL parameters when building signed URLs or the resulting signed URL will be invalid. Instead, manually append them to the resulting URL.

Laravel includes some really nice helpers for building signed URLs: https://laravel.com/docs/master/urls#signed-urls

They allow you to generate a URL containing a signature that prevents anybody from modifying the URL to access something you didn’t intend (e.g., you could provide a signed URL for a specific post with ID 123; if somebody changed that ID to 124, then Laravel will display a 403 Signature Invalid error rather than happily displaying post 124).

Occasionally you may wish to ignore certain URL parameters when validating the signature (e.g., a pagination or print parameter).

In this case, you cannot include the ignored parameter when generating the signed URL, or the URL will be invalid.

Here’s an example. This route ignores the print parameter when verifying the signature:

If you generate a signed URL without the print parameter, it will be valid. But if you include print in the URL parameters for the helper method, the resulting signature will be invalid, because Laravel uses all of those parameters to generate the signature. Instead, just add the new parameter to the end of the resulting URL:

Note how examples 1 and 3 have the same signature; that is the signature that Laravel calculates when determining what the correct signature should be to verify that the URL has not been modified. The example 2 use print=true when generating the signature, but will remove that parameter when verifying the signature, so they don’t match.

Update: I submitted a PR to the framework to pass ignored parameters to the signed route methods to make this easier.

Debugging HTTP Client Request Assertions in Laravel Test Suites

Posted on by Andrew Minion

The Http::assertSent(), Event::assertDispatched(), and Queue::assertPushed()) test methods are perhaps a bit unintuitive.

They seem like they would run just once and check the assertions provided in your callback.

In fact, that callback runs once for each HTTP request (or dispatched event or queued job) and it evaluates the logic inside the callback for each. So if you have 10 requests (or events or jobs) and 3 of them return true it passes. If you have 10 requests and 9 of them return true it passes. It only fails if none of the callbacks return true.

So using dd($request) in one of those assertions is only dumping out the first one and then killing the test. You might not see the one you actually need.

If you’re trying to see what data is in the request, you’re better off either doing something like Log::debug($request->body()) or ray($request->url())1 or putting an xdebug breakpoint on the first line of the callback, running the test, and pressing the “continue” button until you get to the request you’re trying to inspect (possibly the second or fourth or tenth, depending on what happens before the one you want to inspect).

Here is a few code samples that may clarify this a bit more:

Adding Sentry to a Laravel/Inertia/Vue 3 app

Posted on by Andrew Minion

I’m in the process of adding Sentry to a Laravel app that uses Laravel Jetstream with Inertia.js and Vue 3, and the Sentry Vue 3 documentation wasn’t working for me because the app setup was wrapped inside a createInertiaApp function.

The key is to add Sentry in the setup method of that function: