Caching Strategies for Production Laravel Applications

Cache Everything Possible

Caching is the single most effective performance optimization. Every cache hit is a database query avoided, an API call skipped, or a computation saved.

Application Caching

// Cache expensive queries
$products = Cache::remember('popular_products', 3600, function () {
    return Product::withCount('orders')
        ->orderByDesc('orders_count')
        ->limit(20)
        ->get();
});

// Cache tags for related invalidation
Cache::tags(['products'])->put('product_' . $id, $product, 3600);
Cache::tags(['products'])->flush();

Route and Config Caching

# On every deployment
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache

# Clear when developing
php artisan optimize:clear

OPcache

; php.ini
opcache.enable=1
opcache.memory_consumption=256
opcache.max_accelerated_files=20000
opcache.validate_timestamps=0  ; Disable in production

HTTP Caching

// Response caching headers
return response($content)
    ->header('Cache-Control', 'public, max-age=3600')
    ->header('ETag', md5($content));

// Middleware for cache headers
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
    $response = $next($request);

    if ($request->isMethod('GET') && $response->isSuccessful()) {
        $response->setCache([
            'public' => true,
            'max_age' => 3600,
        ]);
    }

    return $response;
}

CDN for Static Assets

// config/filesystems.php
'asset_url' => env('ASSET_URL', 'https://cdn.example.com'),

// In views

Cache Invalidation Strategies

• Time-based: Cache expires after duration
• Event-based: Invalidate when data changes
• Tag-based: Invalidate related items together

Conclusion

Layer your caching: OPcache for PHP, Redis for application data, HTTP headers for browsers, CDN for assets. Cache aggressively, invalidate precisely.