Laravel Pulse, First Party Packages, & the Future of Laravel
Nov 28, 2023
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Taylor, Creator of Laravel and Laravel Pulse, discusses the origins and functionality of Laravel Pulse, as well as Laravel first party packages. The conversation also delves into the future of Laravel and strategies for injecting innovation into the ecosystem.
Laravel Pulse provides a customizable, production-focused dashboard for monitoring Laravel application performance and offers insights into slow routes, database queries, and trending exceptions.
Laravel's future focus is on simplicity and reducing assumptions about developer knowledge, incorporating ideas from other frameworks, bridging the gap between SPA frameworks and server-rendered application frameworks.
Deep dives
Overview of Laravel Pulse
Laravel Pulse is an open-source composer package that provides a dashboard for Laravel applications. It offers a high-level overview of performance health indicators, including CPU usage, memory usage, and disk space remaining. The dashboard includes cards for various application metrics, such as the number of queued jobs, cache hits and misses, and application usage. Laravel Pulse was inspired by the need to quickly identify and resolve issues, such as overloaded queues on Laravel Forge. It also provides insights into slow routes, database queries, and trending exceptions.
Custom Components in Laravel Pulse
Laravel Pulse allows users to add their own custom cards to the dashboard. This feature enables developers to include specific information that is relevant to their application. Custom cards are created using Livewire components, ensuring simplicity and avoiding the need for extensive configuration or complex JavaScript. Users have flexibility in choosing whether to tap into the sampling system or use their own database tables for data collection. The ability to customize and extend the dashboard's functionality provides a tailored experience for different applications.
The Value and Use Cases for Laravel Pulse
Laravel Pulse serves as a production-focused, high-level overview dashboard for Laravel applications. It offers a companion to Laravel Telescope, which is used during local development. The dashboard allows users to monitor various metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, cache hits and misses, slow routes, slow database queries, and trending exceptions. Pulse can be valuable in both proactive monitoring and crisis management scenarios. It provides insights into real-time application performance, aiding in identifying issues quickly and efficiently. Pulse functions as a general physician, offering significant information and guidance, while more specialized tools may be required for in-depth analysis and investigation of specific issues.
The Future of Laravel and Embracing New Ideas
Looking ahead, Laravel's focus for the next major release, Laravel 11, revolves around simplicity and reducing assumptions about developer knowledge. The goal is to simplify the framework, making it more approachable for newcomers. Laravel aims to learn from other frameworks, adopting ideas and concepts that bring value to the Laravel ecosystem. Examples include Laravel's adoption of React and Vue.js through Inertia, as well as Laravel-Blade-like UI components inspired by popular JavaScript UI libraries. The goal is to bridge the gap between traditional SPA frameworks and server-rendered application frameworks, such as Laravel, offering developers multiple paths to choose from based on their preferences and team expertise.
In this episode, we're unwrapping the highlights from Laracon AU, with a special focus on Laravel Pulse leading our discussion. Taylor takes the reins to guide us through the origins and functionality of Laravel Pulse, a health monitoring tool for your Laravel applications.
We then shift our discussion to Laravel first party packages. Taylor openly shares insights into his decision-making process—revealing how he selects packages to join the Laravel family and when it's time to bid them farewell.
Our conversation doesn’t end there though. We also look at the future of Laravel and examine the strategies used for continually injecting innovation and fresh ideas into the Laravel ecosystem.