When preparing a Laravel application for production, ensuring that it runs efficiently and reliably is critical. Laravel Artisan commands provide a powerful suite of tools to help developers optimize performance, streamline deployment, and maintain a professional-grade application. In this quick guide, we'll cover the most essential Artisan commands for production environments, ensuring your Laravel app is ready for prime time.

Why Optimize Your Laravel App for Production?

Before diving into the commands, it’s essential to understand the benefits of optimization:

  • Faster Load Times: Reduce resource usage by compiling and caching critical assets.
  • Improved Stability: Avoid runtime errors and ensure your app behaves consistently.
  • Better Security: Minimize exposure to potential vulnerabilities by limiting debug data and optimizing configurations.

Essential Laravel Artisan Commands for Production

1. Clear and Cache Configuration

Caching configuration files is one of the easiest ways to boost performance:


php artisan config:cache

This command consolidates your app’s configuration into a single, cached file, speeding up every request. Always ensure your .env file and config folder are set before running this.

If you need to clear cached configurations:


php artisan config:clear

2. Optimize Class Autoloading

Laravel’s autoloader dynamically resolves class dependencies, which can be resource-intensive. To optimize it for production:


composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev

This command excludes development dependencies and generates a class map for faster lookups.

3. Route Caching

For apps with many routes, caching them can significantly reduce request processing time:


php artisan route:cache

This command compiles all routes into a single, cached file. To clear the cache, use:


php artisan route:clear

4. View Caching

If your app relies heavily on Blade templates, caching them will improve response times:


php artisan view:cache

This pre-compiles Blade views, eliminating runtime compilation. To clear cached views:


php artisan view:clear

5. Optimize Event Discovery

For apps using Laravel’s event/listener system, optimizing discovery can reduce startup times:


php artisan event:cache

And to clear the event cache:


php artisan event:clear

6. Queue Management

For background jobs, ensure your queues are properly optimized for production. Start the queue worker using:


php artisan queue:work --daemon

This keeps workers alive to process jobs efficiently without restarting for each job.

7. Optimize Logs

Set up daily log rotation to prevent large log files from slowing down your app. Update your logging.php config to use the daily driver:


'driver' => 'daily',

Looking to further optimize your Laravel app? Check out our guide on Eloquent caching and database optimization techniques to learn how to improve query performance and reduce database load.