Scribd
Upload
79 views25 pages

Lessons Learned: On Handling Daily Api Calls Using Laravel

The document discusses some techniques for optimizing performance when handling high volumes of API calls using Laravel. It covers: 1. Updating PHP versions, optimizing PHP processes, and enabling opcode caching to improve performance at the language level. 2. Implementing HTTP layer caching using Varnish and clearing caches after code changes to optimize infrastructure. 3. Caching routes and configuration files, understanding Eloquent queries and relationships to avoid N+1 queries, using tools like Blackfire to find bottlenecks, and preheating caches to optimize performance at the framework level.

Uploaded by

Vikram Bhaskaran
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
79 views25 pages

Lessons Learned: On Handling Daily Api Calls Using Laravel

The document discusses some techniques for optimizing performance when handling high volumes of API calls using Laravel. It covers: 1. Updating PHP versions, optimizing PHP processes, and enabling opcode caching to improve performance at the language level. 2. Implementing HTTP layer caching using Varnish and clearing caches after code changes to optimize infrastructure. 3. Caching routes and configuration files, understanding Eloquent queries and relationships to avoid N+1 queries, using tools like Blackfire to find bottlenecks, and preheating caches to optimize performance at the framework level.

Uploaded by

Vikram Bhaskaran
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 25

SOME

LESSONS LEARNED I
ON HANDLING 300M+ DAILY API CALLS USING LARAVEL
NEO IGHODARO
Senior Software Engineer @ ABOUT YOU
@neoighodaro • neoi.sh
There are a lot of things you can do to improve performance on your own server

or application. Like with most things, it depends on your application. Not every thing

in this talk will be applicable to you.


1
LANGUAGE

2
INFRASTRUCTURE

3
FRAMEWORK
1
LANGUAGE

2
INFRASTRUCTURE

3
FRAMEWORK
1
LANGUAGE

2
INFRASTRUCTURE

3
FRAMEWORK
1 LANGUAGE
KEEP YOUR PHP VERSION UPDATED

It may seem trivial but keeping PHP updated can make a lot of difference especially on
systems that have to deal with heavy loads. Each new version has typically increased the
amount of requests per second and reduced memory usage.

Source: https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PHP-7.4-Early-Benchmarks
1 LANGUAGE
OPTIMIZE PHP PROCESSES

By default, php-fpm for instance, will have a base configuration. of course this
configuration will work just fine but when under heavy loads, you might want to tweak
them for better performance.

Source: https://tideways.com/profiler/blog/an-introduction-to-php-fpm-tuning
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
OPCODE CACHING

When a new request is received in PHP here is a simple representation of what happens and
how the request is treated.

Source: https://www.programmersought.com/article/7229142807/

As seen, parsing the code will happen every time, even if the code did not change. If your code
does not change too frequently, you can benefit from opcode caching…
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
OPCODE CACHING

…once an opcode caching extension e.g OPCache is enabled, it will cache the opcode and
ensure subsequent requests do not have to be parsed. Thus resulting in faster performance.

Source: https://www.programmersought.com/article/7229142807/
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
OPCODE CACHING

'So I spun up a small DO droplet with 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM and ran Apache Benchmark. I
requested the default welcome page of Laravel 5.4 and let the benchmark run for 1 minute with
10 concurrent connections:'

OPcache disabled: 10.18 requests per second


Enabled with default values: 34.52 requests per second
Enabled with optimized values: 42.53 requests per second

Source: Olav van Schie


https://medium.com/appstract/make-your-laravel-app-fly-with-php-opcache-9948db2a5f93
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
OPCODE CACHING

Depending on how aggressive your opcache configuration is, you might need to clear the
cache after every code change. This can be a little annoying so just installing a laravel package
can help with this. After installation you can then add the artisan command to your deploy
script.

https://github.com/appstract/laravel-opcache

$ composer require appstract/laravel-opcache


$ php artisan opcache:clear
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
HTTP LAYER CACHING

Varnish cache is a web application accelerator also known as caching HTTP reverse proxy. It
acts more like a middle man between your client and your web server.

Source: https://www.cloudways.com/blog/varnish-cache/
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
HTTP LAYER CACHING

1st request: GET /stuff → Web Server → PHP process → Client (200ms)
Subsequent requests: GET /stuff → Varnish Cache Hit → Client (10ms)

Source: https://www.cloudways.com/blog/varnish-cache/
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
HTTP LAYER CACHING

As with opcache earlier, we also have to clear the varnish cache whenever the responded
changes. Using a Laravel package we can do this programmatically. With the package we can
also set rules on which routes get cache and which routes don't get cache

https://github.com/spatie/laravel-varnish

$ composer require spatie/laravel-varnish


$ php artisan varnish:flush
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
HONORABLE MENTIONS

Some other things you can do:

• Database Optimisation – https://www.cloudways.com/blog/mysql-performance-tuning/


• Web Server Optimisation – https://www.nginx.com/blog/tuning-nginx/
• High Read/Write Storage
• Load Balancing
• More…

Unfortunately, there are just too many things to speak about. We move.
3 FRAMEWORK
CACHE ROUTES AND CONFIGURATION FILES

Caching the route and configuration files needs to be a part of your build process if
you have one. This will remove the need for Laravel to attempt to load the
configuration every time it is referenced.

You will need to clear and cache the files again if you need to make changes.
3 FRAMEWORK
UNDERSTAND ELOQUENT

There is a lot of stuff that happens under the hood with Eloquent and understanding
some of it will help you understand when using Eloquent can be tricky.

!// ~500,000 models in total

$cars = Car!::with(‘dealerships’)!->where(‘name’, ‘Benz’)!->get();

This could already lead to high memory usage as Eloquent will create a new model
object for each of these rows. You can improve the memory footprint using
LazyCollections.
3 FRAMEWORK
UNDERSTAND ELOQUENT

When you let’s say loop through the entries…

foreach ($cars as $car) {

!//

For every property we access in this loop, Eloquent will likely call the __get() method
to automatically get the attribute. This will begin a slew of checks, which will return a
value or maybe a relationship model.

This is extra overhead that may not be needed for this particular part of your
application and you could actually be better off just using the query builder without
Eloquent.
3
FRAMEWORK
UNDERSTAND ELOQUENT
3 FRAMEWORK
UNDERSTAND ELOQUENT: THE INFAMOUS N+1

We have probably all heard about the need to be weary of accessing relationships in
loops without eager loading them first as it can lead to N+1 queries being sent to the
database.

There are a couple of packages that can help with detecting them:

1. beyondcode/laravel-query-detector
2. barryvdh/laravel-debugbar
3 FRAMEWORK
FINDING BOTTLENECKS USING BLACKFIRE.IO

When looking for bottlenecks in your code, a good tool you can use if Blackfire. It will
help understand your code and where the most time is being spent.
3 FRAMEWORK
PREHEATING (IN-MEMORY CACHING) AND QUEUES

In-memory caches like Redis are very fast can help with storing some data that will be
used repeatedly. Preheating the known areas of the application will make those
resources super ready for when they are needed.
3 FRAMEWORK
PREHEATING (IN-MEMORY CACHING) AND QUEUES

You can also return responses before doing further processing like writing to a cache.
This can be useful because the user is only subject to the time it took that request to
be fulfilled minus the cache write time.
THANK YOU

#StaySafe

You might also like