Supercharge Your Laravel or PHP Application: Unleashing the Power of PHP Opcode Cache for Blazing-Fast Performance

In the world of PHP, include popular frameworks like Laravel, there exists a powerful performance enhancing tool known as the “opcode cache”. This mechanism transforms the way PHP applications operate by storing precompiled bytecode in memory. As PHP is an interpreted language, it needs to read, parse, and convert source code into opcode each time a script is executed. However, with the opcode cache in action, the precompiled opcodes are stored in memory, eliminating the need to recompile the source code repeatedly. The result? Dramatically faster execution times and a significant reduction in the overhead of parsing and compiling PHP scripts.

In this article, we will exploring how it supercharges your Laravel or PHP applications by delivering blazing-fast performance. There are several opcode cache implementations available, such as APC, OPcache, and Zend OPcache, and discuss the optimal way to enable and configure OPcache in Laravel. Additionally, we’ll emphasise that while opcode caching is undoubtedly a game-changer, it is only one piece of the performance optimisation puzzle. There are several other things like database optimisation, caching strategies, and code optimisations, which collectively contribute to a truly optimised Laravel application that flies like never before. Get ready to unlock the hidden speed booster with “opcode cache” technique and take your PHP applications to new heights!

Install Zend OPcache:

The steps to install Zend OPcache depend on your operating system and PHP version.

For Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php-opcache

For CentOS/RHEL:

sudo yum install php-opcache

After installation, you need to enable the OPcache extension in your PHP configuration. Locate the PHP configuration file (php.ini) on your system

Open the php.ini file using a text editor (e.g., nano, vim, or gedit) and find the following

;zend_extension=opcache

Remove the semicolon (;) from the beginning of the line to enable the extension:

zend_extension=opcache

Restart your web server.

The initial request will exhibit the familiar processing time and memory usage. However, subsequent requests will showcase a remarkable transformation, making your application nearly five times faster.

Comparison