Reflecting on Laracon US 2024: Our Key Takeaways

Attending Laracon US 2024 in Dallas was a fantastic experience for our InMotion Hosting team. It gave us a deeper appreciation for Laravel, offered an up-close look at the exciting future of application development, and a chance to interact with the beautiful Laravel community. Taylor Otwell’s keynote, along with the sessions and workshops, really showcased the cool new innovations coming to Laravel. Here’s a rundown of the key highlights:

An Official Laravel VS Code Extension

If you use Visual Studio Code to develop your Laravel applications, you will probably use a good handful of extensions to improve your development experience. Taylor announced an official VS Code Extension for Laravel that will be available in Fall 2024. This extension was teased to have “everything you need for an awesome developer experience”.

Joe Tannenbaum demoed the new extension, sharing a few exciting features:

Better autocomplete for things like Eloquent, routes and services
Clickable code to go to the source
Hover for code for information at a glance and a button for “quick fixes”
Inline highlighting of mistakes
Integration with VS Code Test Explorer

Laravel Cloud: The Future of Shipping

One of the biggest game-changers announced at Laracon US 2024 was the introduction of a dedicated Laravel Cloud service. This new platform is set to change how we deploy and manage our Laravel applications. Taylor created a project during his live demo and had the application running within 25 seconds.

Quick Deployment: Laravel Cloud lets you quickly deploy your application straight from your GitHub repo without worrying about server configurations.
Automatic Scaling: Laravel Cloud’s ability to automatically scale applications based on traffic and resource demands is a significant highlight. This feature ensures that our applications can handle sudden spikes in usage without compromising performance, which is vital for maintaining user satisfaction.
Database Management Made Easy: Laravel Cloud also includes tools for automated backups and performance monitoring, which means less time spent on maintenance and more time spent developing new features.

You can get on the waiting list for Laravel Cloud by visiting cloud.laravel.com.

Laravel Inertia v2.0

Another big announcement was Inertia.js v2. This update is going to be a massive help as we continue to build interactive and dynamic apps:

Easier State Management: Inertia.js v2 makes managing state and routing between the front-end and back-end a breeze. This will let us create even more responsive and reactive apps that users will love.
More Framework Support: With added support for React and Svelte, Inertia.js v2 gives us more flexibility in choosing the right tools for each project. This means we can tailor our solutions to meet our clients’ needs better.
Speed Improvements: The performance upgrades in Inertia.js v2 will make our apps faster and more efficient, which is crucial in today’s fast-paced world, where users expect everything to be instant.

New Features for Laravel

Local Temporary URLs: Instead of using a cloud service to generate temporary URLs, you can now create expiring URLs using their local storage.
Eloquent chaperone(): Introduction of Eloquent chaperone() method helps avoid issues with N+1 queries by reducing the database queries needed to load related models. When used correctly, this should improve the performance of your application.
Deferred Functions: A feature to simplify the execution of background tasks without requiring a complete queue system. These functions are suitable for tasks that don’t need to be completed before the user receives a response.
Flexible Caching with Cache:flexible(): The Cache:flexible() method allows the application to serve stale cache data while revalidating the cache in the background.
Concurrency Facade: Concurrency Facade allows applications to execute multiple tasks simultaneously. By running tasks simultaneously, you can reduce the time it takes to complete complex operations.

Conclusion

Laracon US 2024 was an inspiring experience for our team at InMotion Hosting. We came away with new ideas, fresh perspectives, and a deeper understanding of where Laravel is headed. We’re excited to bring these insights back to our work and continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with Laravel. The future of Laravel is bright, and we’re thrilled to be part of this amazing community.

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