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The benefits of building microservices in Laravel

Microservices have a number of business benefits, especially when PHP developers are working in Laravel. Here’s why Laravel is the ideal framework for building microservices.

Talk to Jeroen, our Accounts director, to see if our Laravel development services are a fit for you.

by Sushant Shrestha

Senior PHP Developer

Like any construction project, coding platforms need a blueprint and a structure – an architecture – that enables projects to take shape. Microservices are a popular style of architecture for web apps. Here at Proshore our web developers are experts in using the open source, web app framework Laravel to build microservices.

Why microservices?

Before we dive into what makes Laravel and Proshore a great combination for building microservices, let’s explore why microservices might be a good fit for your software product.

In the microservices approach to software architecture, an application is built from a number of small, independent services that communicate with each other through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). With microservices, each individual service is designed to perform a specific business function. When you think about it, the structure of microservices reflects the structure of most modern businesses.

Take online retailers as an example. They’re formed of separate services – sign-up, order processing, picking and packing, payment processing, delivery, and so on. From a business perspective, if one person tried to handle all of those things it would become slow, inefficient, and error-prone. As the numbers increase, it also becomes unscalable.

What works much better is when certain tasks are handled by Person A and others by Person B, and so on. It’s the same with microservices. Small independent tasks are handled by different services. For instance, authentication is handled by one different service, and language translations by another.

Microservices can work for web apps of all sizes. Discover how smaller dev teams can implement microservices without a container orchestration system – such as Kubernetes – in our blog on how to scale microservices.

Why not monolith?

The alternative to microservices is monolith architecture. That’s when developers build everything in a single codebase.

Think of a monolith as a single building housing everything. That works for some business models – a grocery store, for example. Different product departments can be comfortably housed under the same roof – it’s a one-stop shop.

But imagine if you tried to build a house that accommodated all of your family’s needs in one building. You’d need a living space, a workspace, a school, a hospital, a grocery store… the list goes on. It would be almost impossible. The solution? Divide the building.

When you need medical attention, you visit a doctor’s surgery or hospital rather than have those things in your own home. It’s the same for microservices. Large-scale development projects can grow too large for a single codebase. So we divide and conquer.

Discover more reasons for choosing microservices over monolith in our blog on what we’ve learned from helping clients make that journey.

Why we use Laravel PHP framework?

Laravel is a popular PHP web application framework. There are many reasons why our developers choose to work in Laravel:

Elegant syntax and expressive code

Laravel code is easy to read and write, promoting a clean and elegant coding style.

Developer productivity

Laravel comes with a wide range of built-in features and tools that significantly boost developer productivity and reduce development time.

Modular and organized code

Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, organizing code into modular components, making it easier to manage and scale applications.

Eloquent ORM

Laravel’s Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) simplifies database interactions by providing an expressive syntax for defining database models and relationships.

Artisan CLI

Laravel includes a powerful command-line tool called Artisan, which automates common development tasks such as migrations, testing, and database seeding. This helps developers perform routine tasks more efficiently.

Blade templating engine

The Blade templating engine is intuitive and allows developers to write templates using plain PHP code. It offers features like template inheritance and sections, making it easy to create dynamic and reusable views.

Laravel ecosystem

Laravel has a vibrant and active community, providing a rich ecosystem of packages and extensions. This ecosystem helps developers leverage existing solutions to enhance their applications.

HTTP Middleware

Laravel uses middleware to filter HTTP requests entering the application. This allows for the addition of layers of functionality to the HTTP request-response cycle, such as authentication and logging.

Built-in authentication and authorization

Laravel provides a simple and convenient way to implement user authentication and authorization, including features like user registration, password reset, and role-based permissions.

Community support and documentation

Laravel has a strong community with active forums, documentation, and tutorials. The well-documented nature of Laravel makes it easier for developers to learn and troubleshoot issues.

How Proshore developers use Laravel

Here at Proshore, we have over 9 years of experience in working with Laravel. We’ve even established our own in-house team of Laravel experts. Here’s how we use it:

In our case, most communication to and fro from microservices is done through API. Laravel makes it much easier and faster to build Rest API.
On the development side, the Laravel container and dependency injection make it way easier to work with repositories. We use the repository pattern for ease of switching and better coding standards.
With huge volumes of interrelated data, relationships start to become complicated, Laravel’s ORM makes database interaction and data manipulation much more streamlined.
We prefer to create independent features which are easier to develop and test. Laravel by itself allows us to separate features i.e. make them independent.
Laravel has a modular structure that is well-suited to building microservices. Using a repository pattern requires a module to be independent which is well suited as Laravel has an built-in modular structure.
Laravel is well-documented and that enables better coding standards. Any functionality added can be documented easily based on the standards stated in the documentation that includes the tests that we write or the feature that we add.

Looking for a more specific Laravel service? Proshore can help

Tell us more about your project requirements and receive customized recommendations via email or over a 15-minute consultation call.

When to use microservices?

Microservices won’t suit every development project. A common use case is when software has a lot of separate yet related services. Imagine a scenario where you have multiple user types logging into multiple services, each with a different role and responsibilities.

Each of those services might then have language translations. Plus, each of those services might belong to a different role – some managed internally, some externally. To manage all of these things in one codebase would be quite chaotic, and disruptive to services.

Here are some other scenarios where microservices architecture might make sense:

You need scalability

Microservices enable individual services to be scaled independently, optimizing resource allocation and ensuring efficient performance based on specific service requirements.

You need agility and flexibility

Microservices architecture allows for independent development, deployment, and updates of services, providing agility and flexibility in responding to changing business needs.

You need a range of technologies

Microservices permit the use of diverse technologies for different services, allowing teams to select the most appropriate tools for each specific business function.

You need to separate out functionality

Microservices promote the segregation of functionalities, with each service focused on a specific business capability, leading to clearer architectural boundaries and easier maintenance.

You need faster testing and feedback loops

Microservices support improved testing by enabling isolated testing of individual services, facilitating quicker feedback loops, and enhancing the overall reliability of a system.

Build better microservices with Proshore

With thousands of ready-to-code developers, Proshore has the tech talent you need in multiple front-end and back-end programming languages, including Laravel.

Need an entire self-managed dedicated development team? Looking to augment your existing capabilities with highly-skilled IT professionals? Here at Proshore, we can put together the right solution for you – whether you’re working with microservices or monolith architecture.

Discover how much you could save by hiring PHP developers from Proshore without compromising on coding quality. Book a call for a free consultation with our Accounts Director and a customized proposal along with quotation.

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