Laravel Model Caching — Performance Boost

How to reduce 1002 MySQL queries in one page to 0 (zero) queries? In this tutorial, I will show how to use laravel model caching. This great library allows to fully cache entire eloquent objects and reduce queries to 0. Self-invalidating feature allows to regenerate data from database on model save, update, create etc..

You can read article with code highlight at Laravel-BAP.com

Where to use model caching?

If You have menu on each page, complex form with many drop-downs populated from database, lot data loaded in background (Language, Date Format, Time Format , Dictionaries etc) Cache it.

1. Create new application

Create a new application with composer. (Note: I have composer installed on Ubuntu, if you are using windows download composer.phar)

composer create-project — prefer-dist laravel/laravel modelcache

cd into project and install DebugBar and laravel-model-caching.

2. Installing required libs

Use artisan composer command to download libs. Don’t forget to publish vendors at the end.

— DebugBar will allow us to see queries to MySQL
composer require barryvdh/laravel-debugbar –dev
— Laravel Model Caching will allow us to cache entire models
composer require genealabs/laravel-model-caching

publish vendors

php artisan vendor:publish

3. Creating models

I will create 2 models Company and City. Company will have City as belongTo relation.

php artisan make:model Company
php artisan make:model City

<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class City extends Model
{
public $table = ‘city’;
public $fillable = [
‘name’,
‘desc’
];
public function companies()
{
return $this->hasMany(City::class);
}
}

4. Creating Migrations

We also need to create migrations for database tables.

php artisan make:migration create_entities
<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
class CreateEntities extends Migration
{
/**
* Run the migrations.
*
* @return void
*/
public function up()
{
Schema::create(‘company’, function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments(‘id’);
$table->string(‘name’);
$table->string(‘desc’);
$table->integer(‘city_id’);
$table->timestamps();
});
Schema::create(‘city’, function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments(‘id’);
$table->string(‘name’);
$table->string(‘desc’);
$table->timestamps();
});
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*
* @return void
*/
public function down()
{
Schema::drop(‘company’);
Schema::drop(‘city’);
}
}

5. Creating Seeders

We need some data to run tests

php artian make:seeder DemoSeeder
<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;
class DemoSeeder extends Seeder
{
/**
* Run the database seeds.
*
* @return void
*/
public function run()
{
\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model::unguard();
\App\Company::truncate();
\App\City::truncate();
for ($i = 0; $i <= 100; $i++) {
$faker = \Faker\Factory::create();
$city = new \App\City();
$city->name = $faker->city;
$city->desc = $faker->sentence();
$city->save();
}
for ($i = 0; $i <= 1000; $i++) {
$faker = \Faker\Factory::create();
$company = new \App\Company();
$company->name = $faker->company;
$company->desc = $faker->sentence();
$company->city()->associate(rand(1,100));
$company->save();
}
}
}

Update DatabaseSeeder.php and add our newly created seeder to default Laravel seeder.

<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;
class DatabaseSeeder extends Seeder
{
/**
* Run the database seeds.
*
* @return void
*/
public function run()
{
$this->call(DemoSeeder::class);
}
}

6. Controller, Views, and Routing

Create new controller, update view and route.

php artisan make:controller ModelCacheController
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use App\Company;
class ModelCacheController extends Controller
{
/**
* @return \Illuminate\Contracts\View\Factory|\Illuminate\View\View
*/
public function index(){
$view = view(‘welcome’);
$companies = Company::all();
$view->with(‘companies’,$companies);
return $view;
}

Yes, ugly AF this should be done with(‘city’) eager-loading but this example shows how to use model cache.

Update Route

<?php
/*
Route::get(‘/’,[‘as’=>’welcome’,’uses’=>’ModelCacheController@index’]);

Update view

<!doctype html>
<html lang=”{{ app()->getLocale() }}”>
<head>
<meta charset=”utf-8">
<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=edge”>
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Laravel</title>
<! — Fonts →
<link href=”https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Raleway:100,600" rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
@foreach($companies as $company)
<li>
{{ $company->name }}
{{ $company->city->name }}
</li>
@endforeach
</ul>
</body>
</html>

7. Testing

php artisan serve

Now what will happen when You will load localhost:8000 in the browser ?

What is happening? Because Laravel uses “lazy load” approach page is generating 1002 queries. (Yes, yes You can use “eager load” as I described in the previous article about performance but here I will show what we can do with caching).

8. Updating model

What I did. I added Cachable trait — with this all data from database will be stored in cache. Now if You will run again Your web app You will see 0 database queries.

<?php
namespace App;
use GeneaLabs\LaravelModelCaching\Traits\Cachable;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class City extends Model
{
use Cachable;
public $table = ‘city’;
public $fillable = [
‘name’,
‘desc’
];
public function companies()
{
return $this->hasMany(City::class);
}
}
<?php
namespace App;
use GeneaLabs\LaravelModelCaching\Traits\Cachable;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Company extends Model
{
use Cachable;
public $table = ‘company’;
public $fillable = [
‘name’,
‘desc’
];
public function city()
{
return $this->belongsTo(City::class);
}
}

Now when you will run localhost:8000 again.

Quite amazing, right?

9. Summary

• I use this library for all my Laravel project where I need to get data from database and those data are mostly static. For example all dictionaries (Date Format, Time Format, Countries etc).
• This library is self-invalidating models this means its refreshing cache when you will create, update, delete record via eloquent.
• This library requires PHP 7.1.*
• It’s better to use Redis in production.

You can read article with code highlight at Laravel-BAP.com