How Proshore is improving Shopify app performance using Laravel microservices
Ongoing success on the Shopify App Store meant a Proshore client needed an efficient way to scale and maintain their content management system (CMS) designed to sync huge volumes of product data between Etsy and Shopify.
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by Subash Ghimire
Technical Lead
Recognizing the need to keep CMS services between Etsy and Shopify running – without extensive interruptions or downtime to a successful Shopify App Store – our developers integrated the legacy CMS with the power of Laravel microservices to enhance functionality and scalability. Here’s how and why.
What was the business need?
The client’s existing platform, built solely on Joomla, was struggling to accommodate the increasing demand for new features and integrate third-party services. Due to a growing customer base with extensive product lines – many containing thousands of products – the app also needed scalability and flexibility.
Joomla is a great CMS, but the legacy architecture was slowing down development. It was hard to identify and resolve bugs, and errors in the most efficient way. Downtime could also impact multiple customers and services. That said, taking a ‘big bang’ approach to resolving issues wouldn’t have been the right move. Instead, we looked to gradually improve app performance by adding microservices.
The project goal was to retain the legacy Joomla CMS, whilst improving app performance by integrating a microservice architecture to address the shortcomings.
Joomla would serve the primary content, handling articles, media, and user management.
Laravel’s microservices were introduced to expand functionality and enhance scalability.
How we used Laravel
The Proshore team identified specific services that could be extracted from Joomla and handled instead as microservices in Laravel. As a PHP framework, Laravel was the ideal choice for building these backend microservices for a Shopify app. That’s partly because Shopify already uses Laravel, making integration much smoother and easier.
- Laravel’s microservices were introduced to handle key functionalities, including user authentication, job processing, webhooks events, and supervisor processes.
- Laravel’s powerful API capabilities facilitated seamless communication between the Joomla CMS and microservices.
- Laravel’s expressive syntax enabled us to easily customize the development of microservices for the client.
- Microservices in Laravel were designed to scale independently based on demand, offering a scalable solution to specific components.
- Laravel’s job dispatching feature provided a powerful way of handling background tasks, ensuring the user experience (UX) remained smooth and responsive, running multiple jobs sequentially, and enhancing the application’s overall performance.
Incremental improvements
Thanks to the addition of Laravel microservices, the app can now handle concurrent requests rather than the previous slower queuing system. Building in Laravel, Proshore developers have optimized the performance of the app and made vertical scaling much easier to implement.
The combination of a Joomla CMS and Laravel microservices also provides the agility needed to roll out new features promptly for users of this Shopify app. Seamlessly integrated with Joomla, it’s now possible to add things like advanced authentication, real-time notifications, and personalized user experiences for different customers.
Microservices built in Laravel enable the client to independently scale functionality to meet demand. Now, specific microservices can be easily scaled based on demand, ensuring a responsive platform during peak usage – such as during Black Friday sales. Processing power can be distributed to where it’s needed the most to optimize services.
From the developers’ side, the microservice architecture of Laravel makes maintenance and updates much easier to implement. In Laravel, debugging is much more straightforward. Not only that, changes to specific services can be made without disrupting the entire system or other customers.
Laravel is also a future-proof solution for the backend of the Shopify app. It integrates seamlessly with multiple frontend technologies via APIs. That means in the future, it could be connected to a different frontend technology, such as React.
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Laravel + Proshore = improved Shopify app performance
By strategically combining Laravel microservices with the Joomla CMS, our client achieved the perfect blend of user-friendly content management and a scalable, feature-rich platform.
What we have shown is a successful integration of two technologies that, when combined thoughtfully, offer a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking agility, scalability, and streamlined content management.
Proshore has deep development expertise in PHP frameworks. Over the last decade, Proshore has built its own community of Laravel developers.
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.
To discover more about improving app performance with dedicated or augmented teams from Proshore – Book a call with our Accounts Director for a free consultation and customized proposal.
Over a 15 mins call, discover how you can benefit from our services.