Laravel Vapor – Serverless deployment on AWS

Laravel Vapor is a serverless deployment platform for Laravel applications, designed to simplify the process of deploying, managing, and scaling your applications on AWS (Amazon Web Services). With Vapor, you can take advantage of the flexibility and scalability of serverless architecture without having to manage the underlying infrastructure.

Key Features of Laravel Vapor:

Serverless Architecture: Deploy your Laravel applications without managing servers, allowing you to focus on your code.
Automatic Scaling: Automatically scale your application based on demand, handling traffic spikes effortlessly.
Zero Downtime Deployments: Deploy updates to your application without any downtime, ensuring a seamless experience for users.
Built-in CI/CD: Integrate Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment directly within Vapor, streamlining your development workflow.
Storage and Database Management: Easily manage databases (like Amazon RDS) and file storage (like Amazon S3) with minimal configuration.
Environment Management: Easily manage multiple environments (e.g., production, staging) for your applications.

Installation and Setup

To get started with Laravel Vapor, follow these steps:

Install Laravel Vapor CLI: You can install the Vapor CLI globally using Composer:

composer global require laravel/vapor-cli

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composer global require laravel/vapor-cli
Login to Vapor: Log in to your Vapor account using the CLI:

vapor login

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vapor login
Create a New Vapor Project: You can create a new Vapor project or link it to an existing Laravel application:

vapor init

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vapor init

Configure Your Environment: In the vapor.yml configuration file, you can define the deployment settings for your application. This file includes settings for:

Environment variables
Databases
Cache and queue services
Storage

Here’s an example of a simple vapor.yml configuration:

id: 1234
name: my-laravel-app
environments:
    production:
        memory: 1024
        cli-memory: 512
        runtime: php-8.1
        database: my-database
        queue: my-queue
        storage: my-storage

id: 1234

name: my-laravel-app

environments:

production:

memory: 1024

cli-memory: 512

runtime: php-8.1

database: my-database

queue: my-queue

storage: my-storage

Deploying Your Application

Once your application is configured, you can deploy it to Vapor.

Deploy to Vapor: To deploy your application, run:

vapor deploy production

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vapor deploy production

This command will build your application, upload it to AWS, and set up all necessary resources.
Viewing Deployments: After deployment, you can view the status and logs of your application through the Vapor dashboard or by using the CLI:

vapor logs

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vapor logs

Managing Your Application

Vapor provides a user-friendly interface for managing your deployed applications.

Monitoring: Monitor application performance, view logs, and track metrics from the Vapor dashboard.
Environment Variables: Easily manage environment variables for different environments directly from the dashboard.
Database Management: Manage databases (create, migrate, seed) using the CLI:

vapor db:seed production

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vapor db:seed production

CI/CD Integration

Vapor integrates seamlessly with popular CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions and GitLab CI, allowing you to automate deployments whenever you push code changes.

Example GitHub Actions Workflow

Here’s an example of a GitHub Actions workflow to deploy to Vapor:

name: Deploy to Vapor

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Set up PHP
        uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
        with:
          php-version: '8.1'

      - name: Install Composer Dependencies
        run: composer install --no-progress --prefer-dist --optimize-autoloader

      - name: Deploy to Vapor
        run: vapor deploy production
        env:
          VAPOR_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.VAPOR_TOKEN }}

name: Deploy to Vapor

on:

push:

branches:

- main

jobs:

deploy:

runs-on: ubuntu-latest

steps:

- name: Checkout Code

uses: actions/checkout@v2

- name: Set up PHP

uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2

with:

php-version: '8.1'

- name: Install Composer Dependencies

run: composer install --no-progress --prefer-dist --optimize-autoloader

- name: Deploy to Vapor

run: vapor deploy production

env:

VAPOR_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.VAPOR_TOKEN }}

Conclusion

Laravel Vapor is an excellent choice for deploying and managing Laravel applications in a serverless environment. Its powerful features and seamless integration with AWS allow developers to focus on building applications without the overhead of managing servers.

Additional Considerations

Costs: While serverless can be cost-effective, monitor AWS usage to ensure it fits within your budget.
Performance: Optimize your application for serverless, considering factors like cold starts and request handling.
Testing: Test your application locally and in staging environments before deploying to production.