By In recent years, the serverless paradigm has become known as a transformative approach to application development, allowing us to focus more on writing code and less on managing infrastructure.
Laravel Vapor, a serverless deployment platform for Laravel applications, brings the power of the Laravel framework into the world of serverless architecture. By integrating Laravel with Lambda and other AWS services, Vapor offers a simple way to build, deploy, and scale applications without the complexities of traditional Linux server management. After your initial setup, your application will behave like it was deployed traditionally - the serverless setup is abstracted away from the user.
In this comprehensive guide, we will discuss serverless architecture and the features and benefits of Vapor, as well as walk through the process of deploying a serverless application using Vapor.
Understanding serverless architecture
To understand the importance of Laravel Vapor and its role in building serverless applications, it's crucial to first understand the fundamentals of serverless architecture. Serverless computing is a cloud computing concept that abstracts away the complexities of infrastructure management, allowing us to focus solely on writing code to implement business logic.
It's a bit of a funny name, since, of course, servers are involved. You won't need to manage servers, so you pay a bit for the privilege of not doing the related infrastructure work. In this model, we no longer need to provision, scale, or manage servers; instead, the cloud provider handles these tasks automatically.
At the heart of serverless architecture are functions. Functions, also known as serverless functions, are units of code that can be executed in response to specific events. In this case, serverless functions run on AWS Lambda, a popular cloud offering.
The events that trigger serverless functions could be HTTP requests, database changes, file uploads, or any number of other custom triggers. Functions are stateless and ephemeral, meaning they only exist for the duration of their execution and do not maintain any persistent state between invocations.
Vapor deployments harness the power of Lambda, Amazon's serverless compute service, to run Laravel applications in the form of serverless functions without managing complexities like the AWS API gateway, AWS APIs, or the AWS SDK. This approach introduces a shift in how applications are built and deployed. Previously, we had to manage servers, infrastructure provisioning, and scaling to accommodate varying workloads that are normal for web applications. With Vapor, all these concerns are abstracted away, allowing us to focus solely on writing code that directly solves business problems.
One of the key advantages of serverless architecture, and by extension, Vapor, is its ability to scale seamlessly. Traditional server setups often involve over-provisioning to handle occasional spikes in traffic, combined with horizontal scaling to keep up with changing demand without waste. Even with autoscaling, you can end up with wasted resources during periods of low demand. Serverless architecture, on the other hand, automatically scales up and down based on the incoming traffic, ensuring optimal use of resources and cost efficiency.
Exploring the benefits of Vapor
Vapor can make it a lot easier to ship software to customers. From simplifying deployments to potential cost savings, let's take a close look at some of the benefits.
Seamless integration with Laravel
One of the most compelling aspects of Vapor is its seamless integration with the Laravel framework. Vapor allows us to continue using the familiar Laravel tools, syntax, and paradigms we are accustomed to while reaping the benefits of serverless architecture. This integration eliminates the need for a steep learning curve, enabling us to transition smoothly into serverless development.
Simplified deployment
Deploying traditional applications often involves configuring servers, managing databases, and handling various server-related tasks. Vapor simplifies this process by abstracting away the underlying infrastructure management.
We can focus solely on our application code and use Vapor's command-line tools to deploy our Laravel apps as serverless functions on AWS. This simplification accelerates the deployment pipeline and reduces the likelihood of deployment-related errors.
Auto-scaling and high availability
Vapor leverages AWS Lambda's auto-scaling capabilities to ensure that your application can handle different levels of traffic. When the number of incoming requests increases, Lambda automatically provisions and manages the required resources to meet the demand.
This high level of scalability guarantees that your application remains responsive, regardless of changes in traffic. While you can autoscale with traditional infrastructure, it's another layer of server management that can be cumbersome.
Cost efficiency
Traditional hosting models often involve paying for resources that you may not use during periods of low traffic. Vapor's serverless architecture only uses resources when a function is actively processing requests.
This "pay-as-you-go" model often results in cost savings, as you are charged based on what your application uses rather than a fixed server capacity. The tradeoff here is that serverless is often expensive at a massive scale, but this can often be offset by only paying for exactly what you need.
Database and storage integration
Vapor seamlessly integrates with AWS services, such as Amazon RDS for databases and Amazon S3 for storage. This integration allows you to manage an application's data and assets while taking advantage of the reliability and scalability of AWS services. The first-party support means you won't have to manage these services yourself, saving you time and preventing potential mistakes.
Custom domains and SSL certificates
Laravel Vapor makes it easy to associate custom domains with your serverless applications. You can also manage SSL certificates directly within the Vapor dashboard, ensuring secure communication between clients and your serverless functions. Managing this alongside your application deployment helps simplify things for you.
Environment management
Even better - Vapor provides a robust environment management system that allows you to define different environments (e.g., development, staging, and production) and configure them separately. This facilitates testing, debugging, and deploying changes with confidence. You can manage deployments of non-production environments in the same way you do production, which helps you keep them production-like.
Background Jobs and Queues
Laravel's queue system seamlessly integrates with Vapor, allowing you to handle background jobs and tasks asynchronously. Vapor supports queue workers powered by serverless functions and an AWS SQS Queue, enabling efficient processing of tasks without the need for managing dedicated infrastructure like a Redis server.
Getting started: Setting up Laravel Vapor
Now that we've explored the foundational concepts of serverless architecture and delved into the features of Laravel Vapor, it's time to roll up our sleeves and walk through the process of setting up Vapor and preparing our development environment for building serverless applications.
Prerequisites
- A basic understanding of Laravel framework concepts.
- An AWS account with appropriate permissions to create and manage resources.
- Composer installed on your local machine for Laravel application management.
Installing Vapor
To begin, install the Vapor CLI tool globally using Composer:
composer global require laravel/vapor-cli
Make sure that Composer's global bin directory is added to your system's PATH so that you can access the Vapor CLI tool from anywhere in your terminal.
Configure AWS
Since Laravel Vapor relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, you'll need to configure your credentials to enable communication between your application and the AWS ecosystem. Follow these steps to set up your AWS credentials:
- If you don't have an AWS account, sign up for one.
- Once you have an AWS account, navigate to the IAM (Identity and Access Management) section of the AWS Management Console.
- Create a new IAM user with programmatic access. This user will be utilized to interact with AWS services from the Vapor CLI. Attach the "AdministratorAccess" policy to this user for now. Note the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key generated for this user.
- Configure the AWS CLI on your local machine by running the following command:
aws configure
Next, you'll need to provide the Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, default region, and preferred output format when prompted. These credentials will be stored locally on your computer in the ~/.aws/credentials file.
Your credentials are now set up, allowing your app to communicate securely with AWS services.
Verify Vapor CLI installation
You need Vapor installed properly to move on with the next steps. To ensure that the Vapor CLI is properly installed and configured, run the following command:
vapor
You should see the Vapor CLI's help information, indicating that the installation was successful.
With the Vapor CLI installed and your credentials configured, you're ready to move on to creating a Laravel application that will be transformed into a serverless application using Laravel Vapor. Let's dig into that next.
Creating a Laravel application
If you already have a Laravel application that you just intend to make changes to, then you can skip this step and proceed to the next section.
Open your terminal and navigate to the directory where you want to create a new Laravel application. Run the following command to generate a new Laravel project with Composer:
composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel serverless-app
This command will create a new Laravel application in a directory named serverless-app with the necessary files.
Set up basic routes and controllers
Next, let's set up some basic routes and controllers for our application. To get started, first open the routes/web.php file and define a simple route by adding the following to the file:
Route::get('/', 'HomeController@index');
Now, create a new controller named HomeController by running the following command in the root of the Laravel project:
php artisan make:controller HomeController
Open the generated HomeController.php file located in the app/Http/Controllers directory and define a basic index method that returns a simple view:
public function index()
{
return view('welcome');
}
This method will return the welcome view, which is a basic HTML template provided by Laravel. The route that you added in routes.web.php will send GET requests to the root endpoint to this index method, rendering that welcome view.
Verify the application works as expected
To verify that your application is running as we'd expect, start the development server by running the following in the root of the project directory:
php artisan serve
Open your web browser and visit http://localhost:8000. You should see the default Laravel welcome page.
With our basic Laravel application set up, we're now ready to use Vapor to deploy it.
Configuring Vapor for your application
This next step includes setting up the necessary environment variables, configuring deployment settings, and preparing your application for deployment.
First, install Vapor as a dependency of your project:
composer require laravel/vapor
This command will add the Vapor package to your project's dependencies, which you'll need for your production deployment (we'll get to that soon!).
Configure environment variables
Vapor uses AWS related variables to manage configuration settings specific to your deployment environments. This file will contain secrets along with other configurations, so do not commit it to version control (Git).
Create a .env.vapor file in your project root to define these variables. Here's an example of a basic configuration with the values substituted out:
APP_ENV=production
APP_KEY=your-app-key
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=your-region
AWS_BUCKET=your-bucket-name
Replace your-app-key, your-region, and your-bucket-name with appropriate values specific to your configuration. The APP_ENV should be set to production for Vapor deployments.
Configure deployment settings
In your vapor.yml file located in the project root directory, you can configure various settings related to your specific deployment. This includes specifying the environment variables file (which we just went over), setting up domains (for production or other environments), and more.
Here's a minimal example of a vapor.yml configuration file:
id: your-vapor-app-id
name: Your Vapor App Name
environments:
production:
domain: your-domain.com
Of course, you'll need to replace the your-vapor-app-id value with your actual Vapor app ID, the Your Vapor App Name value with your desired app name, and the your-domain.com value with your domain name.
Prepare the application for a Vapor deployment
Before deploying your application, make sure you're using the vapor environment. Update your .env file to include the following:
APP_ENV=vapor
Additionally, you can set the VAPOR_DEBUG variable to true to enable debugging output during deployments:
VAPOR_DEBUG=true
Generate assets for the application
If your application includes assets like JavaScript, CSS, or images, generate the optimized assets using Laravel's mix tool:
npm install
npm run production
Deploy your application to production with Vapor
With everything configured, you're ready to deploy your application. In your terminal, run the following command in the root of the project directory:
vapor deploy production
This command will package your application, create the necessary Lambda functions, set up the required cloud infrastructure, and deploy your application to the specified environment.
Observe the deployment process
When you execute the vapor deploy command, Vapor performs several tasks behind the scenes:
- Packages your application code and assets into deployment archives.
- Creates AWS Lambda functions for your application's routes.
- Sets up API Gateway to manage HTTP requests.
- Configures necessary environment variables and AWS services.
- Deploys your application to multiple AWS regions for global distribution.
You can easily observe the command's output, including Vapor deployment logs, to get insights into the deployment, including the creation of Lambda functions, API Gateway stages, and other AWS resources.
Access your deployed application
After successful deployment, Vapor provides a public URL where your application is accessible. This URL will be based on the configured domain in your vapor.yml configuration file. Visit the URL in your web browser to see your deployed Laravel application running in the serverless environment. If everything is working well, your users will never know (or care) that you're running your application in a serverless environment - the application should 'just work' as if it were deployed anywhere else.
Testing that the application works as expected
After deployment, thoroughly test your application's functionality to ensure that everything is working as expected in the serverless environment. Pay close attention to any potential differences between your local development environment and the serverless environment, such as storage and database interactions.
You'll want to test basic functionality, like CRUD, creating, reading, updating, and deleting resources from your application. This should help you build confidence that your deployment is working well in a way that unit tests could not.
Scaling a Laravel Vapor application
Vapor's use of AWS Lambda provides powerful automatic scaling capabilities that handle your application's varying workloads without manual intervention on your part. Understanding how this scaling works and how to optimize it is crucial for maintaining performance and cost efficiency.
Vapor automatically scales your application deployment by creating new Lambda function instances in response to incoming requests. Each function instance can handle one request at a time, and Vapor creates multiple instances as needed to handle concurrent requests.
This means your application can seamlessly scale from handling a few requests per minute to thousands of concurrent requests without any configuration changes. This is a wonderful feature of serverless deployments, but be careful to keep an eye on your costs as you scale. This sort of infrastructure can become costly as traffic increases. Just ask the Amazon Prime Video team - they just migrated away from Lambda for this very reason!
You can monitor your application's metrics through the Vapor dashboard and even AWS CloudWatch to maintain an optimal balance between performance and cost efficiency.
Continuous deployment to Vapor
As updates are made to your application, you can leverage continuous deployment practices to streamline the deployment process. Whenever you're ready to deploy a new version of an application, simply run the vapor deploy production command again. Vapor will automatically update the necessary AWS resources and distribute the new version to your global deployment.
You can even configure your Vapor deployment to run as part of a CI process, whether that's through a traditional CI pipeline or something more lightweight like GitHub actions.
Monitoring your application
Congratulations! You've successfully journeyed through the process of building a Laravel application, then deploying it as a serverless application using Laravel Vapor. Hopefully you've gained some insight into serverless architecture as an option for Laravel production deployments and learned how Vapor simplifies deployment.
The Vapor dashboard provides built-in monitoring tools to help track the performance and usage of your application. You also can use the AWS CloudWatch dashboard to monitor key metrics and attempt to diagnose issues that may arise. If you want more than just baseline metric monitoring, consider signing up for Honeybadger!
Honeybadger's automatic error reporting and Laravel performance monitoring library is really easy to install. Leaning on a more fully-featured monitoring tool like Honeybadger to complement the Vapor dashboard can help you find problems with your app before your users do, even if it's a serverless deployment.
