Laravel 2019 Ecosystem Review

2019 transformed Laravel development. Livewire eliminated JavaScript complexity, Vapor brought serverless deployment, and the ecosystem matured significantly. At ZIRA Software, these innovations accelerated project delivery.

Major Releases

Laravel 5.8 (February 2019):

• Email verification built-in
• Policy auto-discovery
• Carbon 2.0 integration
• Eloquent lazy collections

Laravel 6.0 LTS (September 2019):

• Semantic versioning adoption
• Job middleware
• Laravel UI extraction
• 3 years of support

Livewire: Game Changer

Announced July 2019: Dynamic UIs without writing JavaScript.

Before Livewire:

// Vue.js component
<template>
  <div>
    <input v-model="search" @input="searchPosts">
    <div v-for="post in posts">{{ post.title }}</div>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  data() {
    return { search: '', posts: [] }
  },
  methods: {
    async searchPosts() {
      const response = await axios.get('/api/posts', {
        params: { search: this.search }
      });
      this.posts = response.data;
    }
  }
}
</script>

With Livewire:

// PHP component
class SearchPosts extends Component
{
    public $search = '';

    public function render()
    {
        return view('livewire.search-posts', [
            'posts' => Post::where('title', 'like', "%{$this->search}%")->get(),
        ]);
    }
}

<!-- Blade view -->
<div>
    <input wire:model="search" type="text">
    @foreach($posts as $post)
        <div>{{ $post->title }}</div>
    @endforeach
</div>

Impact:

• Reduced JavaScript requirements
• Faster development
• Lower learning curve
• Better for PHP-focused teams

Laravel Vapor

Serverless deployment on AWS Lambda:

Traditional deployment challenges:

• Server provisioning
• Scaling configuration
• Load balancer setup
• Database management
• Cache configuration

Vapor solution:

# Install Vapor CLI
composer require laravel/vapor-cli

# Configure
php artisan vapor:init

# Deploy
vapor deploy production

vapor.yml:

id: 1
name: my-app
environments:
    production:
        memory: 1024
        cli-memory: 512
        runtime: php-8.0
        database: my-app-db
        cache: my-app-cache
        domain: app.zirasoftware.com
        queue-concurrency: 10
        layers:
            - arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:...

Benefits:

• Auto-scaling (0 to millions)
• Pay per request
• No server management
• Built-in CDN
• Managed databases

Testing Improvements

Better assertions:

// Laravel 5.8+
$response->assertJsonPath('user.name', 'John');
$response->assertJsonFragment(['status' => 'active']);
$response->assertJsonCount(3, 'data');

// Easier form testing
$this->get('/posts/create')
    ->assertSee('Create Post')
    ->assertViewIs('posts.create')
    ->assertViewHas('categories');

// Console testing
$this->artisan('app:process-orders')
    ->expectsOutput('Processing complete')
    ->assertExitCode(0);

Laravel UI

Frontend scaffolding extracted:

composer require laravel/ui

# Generate auth
php artisan ui bootstrap --auth
php artisan ui vue --auth
php artisan ui react --auth

Why extracted:

• Cleaner framework core
• Optional frontend choice
• Preparation for Jetstream (2020)

Ecosystem Growth

Popular packages in 2019:

Spatie packages:

# Laravel Permission
composer require spatie/laravel-permission

# Laravel Backup
composer require spatie/laravel-backup

# Laravel Media Library
composer require spatie/laravel-medialibrary

Beyond Code packages:

# Laravel Websockets
composer require beyondcode/laravel-websockets

# Laravel Dusk Dashboard
composer require beyondcode/dusk-dashboard

Other notable packages:

# Laravel Debugbar
composer require barryvdh/laravel-debugbar

# Laravel IDE Helper
composer require barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper

# Laravel Telescope
# (Built-in debugging tool)

Performance Enhancements

Lazy collections (5.8):

// Memory efficient processing
User::cursor()
    ->filter(fn($user) => $user->isActive())
    ->each(fn($user) => $this->processUser($user));

Improved query performance:

// Subquery selects
$users = User::addSelect([
    'last_post_title' => Post::select('title')
        ->whereColumn('user_id', 'users.id')
        ->latest()
        ->limit(1)
])->get();

Security Updates

Enhanced CSRF protection:

// Exclude specific routes
protected $except = [
    'stripe/*',
    'webhook/*',
];

Better rate limiting:

Route::middleware('throttle:60,1')->group(function () {
    // 60 requests per minute
});

// Per user rate limiting
Route::middleware('throttle:rate_limit,1')->group(function () {
    // Custom rate limits per user
});

Community Growth

Statistics 2019:

• GitHub stars: 60K+ (from 52K)
• Packagist downloads: 100M+
• Laracasts subscribers: 150K+
• Laracon conferences: US, EU, Australia
• Active contributors: 2,500+

Educational resources:

• Laracasts expanding
• Laravel News daily updates
• Official documentation improvements
• Community tutorials explosion

Industry Adoption

Notable companies using Laravel:

• Disney
• Warner Bros
• Twitch
• The New York Times
• Forbes
• BBC
• Pfizer

Use cases:

• Enterprise applications
• SaaS platforms
• E-commerce sites
• Healthcare systems
• Content management
• API backends

Framework Statistics

Performance benchmarks (2019):

# Requests per second (simple route)
Laravel 6: ~1,200 req/s
Symfony 4: ~1,100 req/s
CodeIgniter: ~1,500 req/s

# With ORM queries
Laravel 6: ~500 req/s
Symfony 4: ~480 req/s
CodeIgniter: ~600 req/s

Why Laravel despite not being fastest:

• Developer productivity
• Elegant syntax
• Rich ecosystem
• Strong community
• Great documentation

Developer Experience

What makes Laravel great:

1. Artisan commands:

php artisan make:model Post -mfsc
# Creates: Model, Migration, Factory, Seeder, Controller

2. Eloquent relationships:

$user->posts()->where('published', true)->get();

3. Blade templates:

@foreach($posts as $post)
    <x-post-card :post="$post" />
@endforeach

4. Route simplicity:

Route::resource('posts', PostController::class);
// Creates 7 RESTful routes automatically

Looking Ahead (2020)

What was announced for 2020:

• Laravel 7 (Q1 2020)
• Laravel 8 (Q3 2020)
• Laravel Jetstream
• Tailwind CSS integration
• Livewire 2.0
• More serverless features

Key Takeaways

Laravel 2019 achievements:

• Livewire changed frontend development
• Vapor made serverless accessible
• LTS support for enterprise
• Ecosystem matured significantly
• Community grew stronger

Why developers love Laravel:

• Rapid development
• Clean, expressive code
• Excellent documentation
• Active community
• Modern PHP practices
• Business-friendly licensing

Conclusion

2019 was transformative for Laravel. Livewire and Vapor expanded capabilities while maintaining developer-friendly philosophy. The ecosystem growth positioned Laravel as enterprise-ready framework.

Building with Laravel? Contact ZIRA Software for expert Laravel development services.