Laravel That Ships

PHP applications built with modern Laravel. Queues, events, testing, deployment pipelines for shipping with confidence.

PHP Codebases Nobody Wants to Maintain

Your PHP app was built by three developers over five years. Procedural code mixed with an abandoned framework and custom MVC. Database queries in view files. Business logic in 500-line controllers. No tests, no types, no documentation. Every deployment is terrifying.

Drowning in a Monolith

Routes, controllers, models, and views in the same directories without boundaries. Inconsistent caching. Queues configured but nobody knows if they work. FTP deployment. Adding features requires understanding the entire codebase.

Eloquent Can Hide Expensive Queries

Eloquent is elegant but can hide N+1 query problems behind a clean API. A simple loop over related models can generate hundreds of database queries without obvious indication. Without query logging and monitoring, these performance problems go unnoticed until the application slows down under load. Eager loading helps but requires developers to anticipate which relationships will be needed.

Authentication Complexity Grows

Simple email-password auth works for MVP. Then you need social login, SSO, API token auth, OAuth provider scopes, team-based permissions, and rate limiting per user. Each addition requires changes across the auth stack. Without a systematic approach to authentication, your auth code becomes a patchwork of middleware, guards, and providers that is hard to audit and harder to change.

Traditional PHP has a deserved reputation for unmaintainable code. Low barrier to entry means inexperienced developers build apps that work until maintenance is needed. Without a framework, PHP mixes presentation, logic, and data access. Without testing, refactoring is impossible.

But modern PHP is different. PHP 8.x with typed properties, named arguments, attributes, match expressions is genuinely modern. Laravel provides structure preventing spaghetti. Pest PHP provides elegant testing. Forge and Envoyer provide professional deployment.

The other failure is treating Laravel as monolithic. Everything in the app directory. No domain boundaries. Eloquent models handling database access, email, and PDF generation. Controllers containing logic, validation, auth, and formatting. The framework provides structure but you must use it correctly.

Performance optimization in Laravel requires understanding the framework caching mechanisms. Route caching, config caching, view caching, and event caching can dramatically reduce response times. Queue workers need proper configuration for throughput. Database query optimization through eager loading and index design prevents N+1 problems. These optimizations are well-documented but often skipped in initial development.

Laravel facades provide a clean API but make testing harder than dependency injection. Facades are static and their underlying implementations are replaced in tests, which works but hides the dependency structure of your code. Teams that rely heavily on facades end up with code that is harder to refactor because the dependencies are not explicit in the constructor signatures.

Laravel update cycles require attention. Major versions deprecate features and change behavior. Your application that works on Laravel 9 may break on Laravel 11. Skipping multiple versions makes upgrades harder. Staying current requires ongoing investment in testing and code updates that teams often defer until it becomes an emergency.

We build Laravel with domain-oriented architecture. Code organized by domain, not type. User management in a User domain. Billing in a Billing domain. Each domain has models, services, controllers, and tests. Work in one domain without understanding every other.

Laravel ecosystem used deliberately. Queues with Horizon monitoring. Events for decoupled communication. Notifications for user messages. Eloquent for database access. Form requests for validation. Policies for authorization. Each tool for its purpose.

Testing is comprehensive but practical. Feature tests for HTTP endpoints. Unit tests for business logic. Browser tests for critical flows. Pest PHP for readable syntax. Tests on every commit. Deployments blocked on failure.

We optimize Laravel applications for production from the start. Caching is configured appropriately for each environment. Queue workers are tuned for your workload. Database queries are optimized through careful Eloquent usage and index design. The result is a Laravel application that performs well under production traffic without requiring emergency optimization later.

We configure Laravel for production performance from the start. Config caching, route caching, and view caching are set up during deployment. OPcache is configured for optimal PHP bytecode caching. Queue workers are tuned for your workload with appropriate concurrency settings. The result is a Laravel application that performs well under production traffic.

We set up Laravel Horizon for queue monitoring with real time job metrics, failed job tracking, and workload balancing. Pulse for application health monitoring with request throughput, queue throughput, and error rate dashboards. Your team has visibility into production health from the start.

Domain-Oriented Architecture

Code by business domain. Domain-specific models, services, controllers, tests grouped together. Clean boundaries. Shared infrastructure for cross-cutting concerns. Repository pattern for data access abstraction when Eloquent coupling is a concern. SOLID principles applied to service classes. Action classes for single-responsibility business operations. DTOs for type-safe data transfer between application layers. Testing helpers for eloquent model factories and seeders. Feature test templates for common patterns. Database migration guidelines for zero-downtime schema changes. Performance monitoring with Laravel Pulse for production insights.

Queue and Job Infrastructure

Horizon for queue monitoring. Job pipeline with retry and failure handling. Batch processing. Scheduled tasks. Rate-limited jobs for API integration.

API Development

Sanctum or Passport for API auth. Resource classes for consistent responses. Rate limiting. Versioning. OpenAPI documentation. Webhook support.

Frontend Integration

Livewire for dynamic interfaces without SPA. Inertia.js for Vue or React when needed. Blade templating. Vite for asset compilation. Tailwind CSS.

Security and Authentication

Laravel Sanctum for SPA and API authentication. Authorization policies for granular access control. CSRF protection with automatic token management. XSS prevention through Blade templating. SQL injection prevention through Eloquent parameter binding. Rate limiting for public endpoints. Security headers managed through middleware.

Caching and Performance

redis caching for frequently accessed data. Full-page caching for public routes. Query result caching for expensive database operations. Config caching for reduced file reads. Route caching for faster URL matching. View caching for compiled Blade templates. OPcache configuration for PHP bytecode caching.

Testing Infrastructure

Pest PHP test suite with feature, unit, and browser tests. Database testing with SQLite in-memory for speed. HTTP testing for API endpoint validation. Mail testing for email delivery verification. Queue testing for job processing verification. Notification testing for multi-channel delivery. Browser testing with Laravel Dusk for critical user flows.

Event-Driven Architecture

Laravel events for decoupled domain communication. Event subscribers for organized handling. Queued event listeners for background processing. Broadcast events for real time frontend updates. Event sourcing for audit trails. Webhook dispatches for external system notifications. Event replay for recovery scenarios.

Architecture and Domain Design

Identify domains, design code structure, database schema with Eloquent relationships. Plan routes, queue jobs, and events.

Core Domain Development

Build each domain independently: models, migrations, controllers, services, tests. Domains prioritized by business value.

Integration and Infrastructure

Connect domains through events, jobs, shared services. Configure Horizon. Set up deployment pipeline.

Testing and Quality Assurance

Feature tests for every endpoint. Unit tests for business logic. Browser tests for critical flows. PHPStan or Larastan analysis.

Deployment and Operations

Server provisioning. Zero-downtime deployment. Laravel Pulse monitoring. Backup and recovery procedures.

Ongoing Optimization

Continuous monitoring of queue throughput, database performance, and application health. Regular dependency updates and security patches. Iterative feature development based on usage data.

Modern PHP, Not Legacy

pHP 8.x with typed properties, named arguments, modern patterns. Your codebase is maintainable, not a legacy nightmare.

Laravel Ecosystem Done Right

Queues, events, notifications, broadcasting. The right tool for each job without abusing any feature.

Testing Non-Negotiable

Every feature tested. Every deployment runs tests. Safe to refactor and extend without breaking existing functionality.