Day by day people are becoming busier so, they need faster technology to deal with it. Therefore, in the world of web development, making applications run faster and more efficiently is a constant pursuit. If we see globally, web applications, especially those built with PHP like Laravel, execute tasks one after another in a series. Means if your application needs to do various activities, it has to wait for each one to finish before moving on to the next. Moreover, Laravel 11 introduces an exciting new feature called the Concurrency facade,it is designed to make running multiple tasks simultaneously much simpler. This post will explore what concurrency is, why it’s so significant for developers just starting with Laravel, and how you can make use of this new tool to build more responsive and performant applications.
What do you mean by Concurrency?
Giving an example will make it clear. just imagine there are Multiple Chefs in a Kitchen. While understanding concurrency, make an image of a busy kitchen where several chefs are preparing a meal. If each chef had to wait for the previous chef to completely finish their dish of preparation before starting their own task, it would take a lot of time to prepare a new complex meal.
Concurrency is like having multiple chefs working at the same time on different parts of the meal—someone might be chopping vegetables, another searing meat, and a third preparing a sauce, all these occur in parallel. This definitely speeds up the overall process. In the context of web applications like those built with Laravel, concurrency is the ability to manage various requests or tasks at the same time, without making users wait for one action to finish before another begins. This is particularly incidental when an application needs to perform different independent actions, such as bringing data from various sources or processing various pieces of information.
Why Should Laravel Beginners Care About Concurrency? Faster Apps & Happier Users!
The main reason Laravel beginners should get interested in concurrency is the drastic improvement it can bring to application performance and responsiveness. Just imagine where a web page is certainly eager to display information gathered from multiple parts of your application’s database or even from external websites.The application would have to bring forth this data sequentially, without concurrency, it means it have to wait for each piece of information to be retrieved before moving on to the next.
This may proceed to noticeable delays, which can make the application feel inert and sluggish to users. By accomplishing concurrency, these data fetching operations can happen simultaneously, drastically reducing the overall loading time of the page and providing a much easygoing, fugitive and faster experience for the users. This conduct to a more satisfying and relaxing interaction and can significantly enhance the perceived quality of your application.
In addition, as applications grow in complexity, the urgency to handle several tasks efficiently becomes increasingly important, making concurrency a valuable concept to grasp even for beginners.
Introducing Laravel 11’s Shiny New Concurrency Facade
Laravel 11 introduces a strong, capable, and familiar component, which is called the Concurrency facade, which simplifies the process of running tasks concurrently. This new addition to the framework helps the developers to easily perform multiple operations in parallel, leading to potential performance gains.
The Concurrency facade is particularly designed to make concurrent execution straightforward, particularly while accommodating with several anonymous functions, also known as closures. Primary process to utilize this feature is through the run() method, which accepts an array of these closures.
Each closure within this array provides a task that Laravel will attempt to execute at the same time as the others. This executes a clean and organized way to manage concurrent operations within your Laravel applications.
How Laravel Achieves Concurrency (The Magic Behind the Scenes – Simplified)
When you utilize the Laravel Concurrency facade, Laravel initiates a sequence of actions to facilitate the concurrent execution of your tasks. Essentially, Laravel takes each of the “to-do lists” you provide in the form of closures and delegates them to separate, independent workers. These workers, in technical terms, are separate processes that run in the background.
Laravel manages the process of packaging up your code (serializing the closures) and sending it off to these workers. Each worker then executes its assigned task independently of the others. Once after completing its job, the worker reports the result back to the main process.
This implementation allows multiple tasks to be carried out at the same time, drastically reducing the overall time taken to complete all the processes. Laravel offers different “drivers,” such as process (the default) and fork, which determine how these worker processes are managed. Most of the common use cases, the default process driver works seamlessly, introducing an easy way for beginners to start implementing concurrency in their applications.
Practical Examples: Let’s See Concurrency in Action!
To illustrate how the Concurrency facade works, let’s look at some practical code examples.
Example 1: providing Data from Two Different Database Tables
Think you have a dashboard in your Laravel application that needs to display the total number of registered users and the total number of blog posts. Basically, you might fetch this data with two separate database queries executed one by one. Using the Concurrency facade, you can perform these queries simultaneously:
PHP
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Concurrency;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
public function index()
{
[$userCount, $postCount] = Concurrency::run();
return view('dashboard', ['userCount' => $userCount, 'postCount' => $postCount]);
}
In this instance, the Concurrency::run() method takes an array containing two closures. The first closure calculates the number of users, and the second calculates the number of posts. Laravel will lead these two database queries concurrently. The results are then returned as an array, which we can unpack into the $userCount and $postCount variables to display in our dashboard view. This parallel redaction can lead to a faster loading time for your dashboard.
Example 2: Simulating External API Calls
Consider an image where your application needs to fetch data from two different external APIs. These API calls might take some time to complete. Using concurrency can significantly improve the responsiveness of your application:
PHP
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Concurrency;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;
public function fetchData()
{
= Concurrency::run([
fn () => Http::get('https://api.example.com/users'),
fn () => Http::get('https://api.another-api.com/products'),
]);
$users = $userResponse->json();
$products = $productResponse->json();
return view('data', ['users' => $users, 'products' => $products]);
}
Here, we are using Laravel’s HTTP client to make two separate GET requests to different API endpoints within the Concurrency::run() method. These requests will be initiated at roughly the same time, and the application will wait for both to complete before proceeding. Once both responses are received, we can process the JSON data and pass it to our view.
Real-World Use Cases: Where Can Beginners Use Concurrency?
As a beginner, you might find several practical applications for concurrency in your Laravel projects:
- Dashboard Data Aggregation: While creating dashboards that display data from various models or sources, concurrency can help to bring and present this information more quickly, as demonstrated in Example 1.
- Integration with Multiple External Services: If your application communicates with several independent external APIs or services, using concurrency to provide data or perform actions in parallel can significantly reduce the overall processing time, as shown in Example 2.
- Simple Background Tasks within a Request: Tasks that need to be performed after a user action but don’t necessarily need immediate feedback,like sending a welcome email after registration, the Concurrency facade can be used to initiate these tasks in the background without blocking the user’s request. However, for more complex or truly long-running background operations, Laravel Queues stay sturdier, and it recommended solution.
- Generating Basic Reports: If you need to generate simple reports that involve retrieving data from different parts of your application, concurrency can help speed up the data retrieval process.
More Articles to Read:
Laravel Broadcasting Core Concept | Laravel 12.x |TutorialDev
Laravel Collections: Your Friendly Guide to Handling Data Like a Pro
How to Use Laravel Cache for Speed Up your Application
Benefits of Using Laravel Concurrency: Why Bother?
Utilizing the Concurrency facade in Laravel offers several key advantages:
- Improved Performance: Enabling parallel execution of tasks and concurrency can immediately reduce the overall time it takes for certain operations to complete, leading to faster application response times.
- Enhanced Responsiveness: Faster processing times translate to a more responsive application, providing a smoother and more enjoyable experience for users.
- Simplified Code for Concurrent Operations: The Concurrency facade offers a clean and intuitive API for managing concurrent tasks, especially when working with closures, making the code easier to write and understand compared to manual approaches.
- Potentially Better Resource Utilization: For certain types of operations, such as waiting for input/output (like network requests), concurrency can allow the application to utilize server resources more efficiently by performing other tasks while waiting for these operations to complete.
Conclusion: Start Experimenting with Laravel Concurrency Today!
The introduction of the Concurrency facade in Laravel 11 marks an exciting step forward in making parallel task execution more accessible to developers of all levels. By introducing a simple and intuitive path to run multiple operations simultaneously, this feature allows beginners to build faster, more responsive, and ultimately better Laravel applications. We inspire you to try out the examples provided in this guide and explore the possibilities of using concurrency in your own projects. As Laravel continues to evolve, features like the Concurrency facade demonstrate its commitment to making web development more efficient, enjoyable, and acceptable to everyone.