Laravel and the Enterprise

You may have heard some folks say "Laravel is great for small apps, but when it comes to something *real*..."

It's my goal to show how inaccurate and misconceived these criticisms are; to show how many companies are using Laravel in enterprise contexts, and how successfully; and to provide some guidance for common process, code, and dev-ops/deploy concerns when writing enterprise-ready Laravel applications.

Transcript

1. PRESENTED BY Matt Stauffer @stauffermatt AND THE LARAVEL
2. “Sure, Laravel is great for fun little side projects…
3. …but can you use it for Enterprise?”
6. en•ter•prise [en-ter-PRAHYZ]
 noun !
7. Started with Wikipedia…
8. “[Enterprise software…] is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users.” WIKIPEDIA
9. “[Enterprise software is…] a collection of computer programs with common business applications, tools for modeling how the entire organization works, and development tools for building applications unique to the organization” WIKIPEDIA
10. “According to Martin Fowler, ‘[a]bout the display, manipulation, and storage of large amounts of often complex data and the support or automation of business processes with that data.’” WIKIPEDIA
11. Then asked on Twitter…
12. J.T. GRIMES I don't think you can find consensus on what "enterprise" means, which means your audience will spend an hour arguing "but that's not enterprise!" instead of learning. 
 
 Here there be elephpant-shaped dragons. @JT_GRIMES
13. JOHN CORRY [You know it’s enterprise if] we spend more time in meetings than we do building things. @JPCORRY
14. MATT JOHNSON “Enterprise” is just code for “I have no idea what I’m doing on a project this big, please take this money and give me a 1-800 number to call when $#!7 goes south”. @MATTJOHNSONSTL
15. • What is enterprise? • What is enterprise-ready code, and is Laravel enterprise-ready? • Key considerations for enterprise code, process, and dev-ops/deploys • Success stories • An aside on YAGNI Agenda
16. What is enterprise, really?
17. Factors in enterprise projects/teams Team size Customer base size Legal and compliance constraints Dev team size
18. Factors in enterprise projects/teams Complication of operations / deployments Distance to other teams (legal, QA, product, etc.) Length of projects Pain if offline
19. Factors in enterprise projects/teams Legal and compliance constraints Customer base size Dev team size Team size LARGE LARGE LOTS LARGE
20. Complication of operations / deployments Factors in enterprise projects/teams Length of projects Distance to other teams (legal, QA, product, etc.) Pain if offline LOTS GREAT LOTS LONG
21. Is Laravel enterprise-ready?
22. YES. #FightTheFUD
23. What is enterprise-ready? 1
24. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • Can connect to multiple providers of other services (database, cache, session, etc.), differentiated by config variables if needed • Trusted proxy and Scaling Laravel for node balancing, etc. • Easy pessimistic locking, transactions, etc. for complex database interactions • Maintenance mode etc. for suggested downtime solutions Dev-Ops and Deploy friendliness Enterprise Ready ✅
25. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • Bcrypt hashing by default, & easy encrypting/decrypting • Powerful validation options • CSRF & XSS protection out of the box • PDO, easy parameterization, mass assignment protection • Open source, AKA 10s of thousands of eyes on every LOC Security Enterprise Ready ✅
26. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • Contracts • Multi-driver (auth, etc.) • All services keyed to single keys (e.g. `logger`) and easy to swap out globally • It’s just PHP ™ Flexibility Enterprise Ready ✅
27. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • Step-by-step upgrade instructions in the docs • < 1 day for all recent upgrades; < 4 hours for most projects; latest upgrades much simpler • Laravel Shift, and Laravel Shift Human Assistance (laravelshift.com) • Tighten and other agencies help with bigger upgrades Ease of Upgrades Enterprise Ready ✅
28. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • LTS releases are 2 years of bug fixes, 3 years of security fixes • Laravel sponsors/partners get priority access to Taylor (https://laravel.com/partners) • Tighten is beginning to offer a level of enterprise long term care—still in the process of figuring out what everyone wants and needs, but we’re here
 (https://tighten.co/laravel/support) Long-term Support Basically Enterprise Ready ✅
29. What is Enterprise Ready? GeekyBoy.com (Adam Culp, of Zend) A little help from my friends:
30. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • Composer • PSR-1, PSR-2, PSR-3, PSR-4, PSR-7*, PSR-11, PSR-16 • PSR Bridges: ๏ PSR-6 (github/madewithlove/illuminate-psr-cache-bridge) ๏ PSR-15 (github/jshannon63/laravel-psr15-middleware) • Plus composer, and it’s just PHP ™ Interop(erability) Enterprise Ready ✅
31. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • What does lockin mean? “Can’t change to another vendor in the future.” • Can change all dependencies, port all controllers, write as much as you want in service class POPOs • ! Avoid lockin Enterprise Ready ✅
32. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • 1707 contributors • Jeffrey taking over • Tighten & Other companies supporting • What happens to Laravel if Taylor Otwell disappears? - mattstauffer.com/blog/what- happens-to-laravel-if-taylor-otwell-disappears/ Contributors Enterprise Ready ✅
33. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • Laravel documentation • Other learning resources ๏ Books & Blogs ๏ Podcasts ๏ Laracasts ๏ Training courses Documentation Enterprise Ready ✅
34. WHAT IS ENTERPRISE-READY? CONCLUSION: 1 • Follows Symfony release schedule and roadmap for all Symfony dependencies • No more or less roadmap available than any other PHP framework. Build the ideas as you come up with them Roadmaps Enterprise Ready ✅
35. Code considerations for the enterprise 2
36. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 [T]he biggest problems of “enterprise” level development is one of working in very large teams. Without good organization codebases can be difficult to navigate and conflicts can make mayhem - predictable places to find code and small files are my top 2 tips…
 - Gary Hockin (on Twitter) [D]iscoverability and consistency are paramount when you’re dealing with frequent onboarding. My enterprise exp. involves many non-Laravel devs too, so I always prefer conventions that help the tools help you (e.g. type-hints & docblocks promote discovery in IDE)…
 - Sara Bine (on Twitter) Conventions, predictability, & discoverability
37. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 • Use IDE-friendly verbosity like type-hints and doc blocks • Lean on Laravel’s established conventions whenever possible; less decisions to make and easier to onboard Laravel devs new to your codebase • Develop and communicate conventions of what goes where • Set and enforce coding standards (e.g. Nitpick-CI or StyleCI) Conventions, predictability, & discoverability (CONTINUED)
38. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 • Write tests • Lots of tests • Write the broadest tests you can for your context • Test your code and test that it works with the code it’s supposed to interact with, especially if you don’t maintain the code it’s supposed to interact with • Enterprise best testing practices == best testing practices Tests and test coverage (CONTINUED)
39. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 Tests and test coverage TestDrivenLaravel.com
40. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 It’s tempting to worry about performance etc but there are well known solutions to that problem like caching - maintainability is key to long living projects and being able to find the code you want to change is the number one problem when we were called in as consultants…
 - Gary Hockin (on Twitter) Performance
41. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 • DebugBar/query optimization, n+1 and eager loading, and the usuals (database indexing and chunking, etc.) • If possible, optimize later (premature optimization is almost always wrong) • Lead up: Performance issues aren’t bad, they’re opportunities to refactor with a lot of useful information • Queues, workers, cache, spin off microservices Performance (CONTINUED)
42. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 Performance (CONTINUED) ScalingLaravel.com
43. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 Build projections from older systems Database concerns Transactions and locking Multi- database connections Adjust for legacy table systems 1 2 3 4
44. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 Microservices and API-first
45. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 • It’s just PHP ™ Login/SSO
46. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 Scale friendliness Separation of architecture concerns Flexible configuration management Cache-ability Componentization 1 2 3 4
47. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 • Laravel’s ACL (or those offered in third party packages) are your best friends • https://github.com/owen-it/laravel-auditing ๏ Eloquent events $ ๏ Custom log handlers, especially in 5.6+ $ Events, auditing, transparency, & access
48. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 • DDD • Event Sourcing • Microservices • API-first • Enterprise Buzzwords
49. CODE CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 2 • Audit security, up-to-date-ness, tests, responsitivity • Consider directly using PHP package instead of the Laravel bridge so you own the bootstrapping • Consider using Laravel components instead of third-party packages (unless third party is another major vendor) if possible for reliability • Limit API interfaces between external packages and your applications; consider building custom bridge/ client/interface Third party packages
50. Process considerations for the enterprise 3
51. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 Why? • More developers; more new developers; more developers from other stacks; more junior developers How? • Better documentation, IDE-friendliness • Bin scripts for setup; pre-packaged local dev environments • Good tests Easy onboarding
52. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 In large apps and orgs, it’s critical to keep the ball moving. Everything: requirements, to processes/ workflows, deployments, code standards & style guides, environments etc. One well known source.…
 - Anthony Terrell (on Twitter) Documentation
53. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 Mentioned before as a code issue but: which conventions? • Predictable within organization/code-base and enforced via commit hooks or in CI • Preferably predictable within broader community for easier onboarding and code reuse Conventions about patterns, folders, tools and packages, code organization, config, DI, naming, code style, API style, testing. Conventions and organization
54. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 • Mythical man month • More teams, more separate components • Architecture vs. Coding vs. Code Review Splitting responsibilities
55. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 Sprint cycles and lower-case “a” agile ⚙
56. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 Tech debt management strategy
57. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 Source control & deploy strategy
58. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 Hiring and contractors
59. PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 3 Laravel norms are key…unless they’re not ☝
60. Dev-ops/Deploy considerations for the enterprise 4
61. DEV-OPS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 4 It’s all out of your hands
62. DEV-OPS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 4 Scaling, sharding, replicating, load balancing ⚖
63. DEV-OPS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 4 Environments and Deploys
64. DEV-OPS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 4 Only run it once!
65. DEV-OPS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 4 Rate limiting ✅
66. DEV-OPS CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE 4 Measure and act
67. Success stories 5
68. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • Powers gene.com through many millions of visits per month • Powers a significant number of backend tools; deployed by and within complex IT infrastructure • “It’s like PHP, but we actually enjoy working in it.” • “Laravel makes a nice abstraction layer on top of services we need to use, like Google Search Appliance” Genentech
69. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • 42-year old company • Currently $432 million/year revenue; recently sold for $1.4billion • 380+ employees Bankrate, Inc.
70. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • Direct connection—import and reporting—to the largest insurance providers in the U.S. • Complex business logic around scheduling, time zones, counsellors’ accreditation, missed sessions, and more • Event handling system on counseling session events • Complex auditing system One of the largest Telehealth companies in the world
71. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 100% Laravel, running on Red Hat / Apache / Maria / PHP: • All communications between corporate and field • 50k+ users daily • Complex legal compliance around tasks, communications, tracking actions through multiple connected systems • 1mil requests/day on average Unnamed 13-billion-dollar retail company
72. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • At @FixicoNL we use Laravel 5 at the Enterprise level with #Kubernetes support. Our applications are running 24/7, no matter what. The developers are thrilled with the tech stack. . • 13 devs, 1390 shops serviced, custom dashboards for shops and mobile apps for users • Laravel and Lumen services with entirely decoupled frontend • Tried Doctrine and regretted it; moved to Eloquent with manual getters & setters FixicoNL
73. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • Commerce platform for sandbox games—“Shopify for Minecraft” • Over 500k webstores; 169 countries • 16 million payments • 400-500k requests per hour with common 3-4x spikes • One Christmas 1.2m requests/hour Buycraft
74. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • Largest Internet-based career network for matching security-cleared professionals with hiring companies. • Targets U.S. government contractors, federal agencies, national laboratories, and universities. • “We chose Laravel for its ease of use, features, and flexibility to integrate with our existing codebase.” • Migrated existing database tables into Eloquent ClearanceJobs.com
75. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • Joe Lennon / • Startup supporting crucial business needs of enterprise clients • Multiple-provider SSO • AWS/EB, Load balancing, ElastiCache, SES/SNS/SQS/etc., Cloudfront, and more • Web- and native-based tools built in tandem • “[Our experiences have been] overwhelmingly positive.” Workvivo
76. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • 40+ member dev team, interacting with dozens of external teams with different services and codebases • Single Laravel monolith • Read from and write to multiple databases of different database types • Maintain a custom ticketing system & work flow engine • “We have had nothing but a fantastic experience using Laravel.” Major unnamed telecom organization
77. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • $20+ billion in transactions • Security audits of entire tech stack; e.g. Laravel, Git, Node, Vue, Nginx, etc. • Have to train non-developers on how to understand/fix entire dev tech stack • Hard to talk about publicly because of approvals, so people don’t know as much about enterprise users of Laravel • “As far as I’m concerned, people saying that Laravel isn’t enterprise ready simply have either no clue and/or have ulterior motives” Unnamed Top 10 U.S. bank
78. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • SaaS for retail • POS • Processing for hospitality industry • Used by over 48,000 businesses around the world • Processes over $14 billion in transactions every year Major unnamed Point of Sale provider
79. ENTERPRISE LARAVEL SUCCESS STORIES 5 • Criterion Collection • Dun & Bradstreet • Network54 (acquired recently by Tapatalk) • Toyota • CampingWorld.com • State of Georgia’s official tourism site • Invicta Watches Found from BuiltWith/Google:
80. Laravel is in the enterprise already. And they love it. ❤
81. You can’t predict the future
82. You’ll never know less about a project than you do on the first day.
83. JIT (Just-in-Time) optimizations
84. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.”
85. YAGNI
86. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQUxJObxTUs
92. Conclusions and stuff?
93. • What is the enterprise? • What is enterprise-ready code/framework? • Is Laravel enterprise-ready? • What are some code, process, and dev-ops considerations when writing enterprise-focused code? • Who else has used Laravel in the enterprise? • What does Matt want me to remember? Big questions
94. • ! • (bigger, larger, more) What is the enterprise?
95. • It’s complicated. • (flexible, secure, stable, clear, etc.) What is enterprise-ready code/framework?
96. • Yep! #FightTheFUD Is Laravel enterprise-ready?
97. • Write code for the “lots” of enterprise—lots of team members, lots of servers, lots of old tables with bad names, etc. What are some considerations for coding in enterprise contexts?
98. • Many huge, multibillion-dollar, highly regulated, complex, big companies from around the world Who else has used Laravel in the enterprise?
99. • “Cross that bridge when we’ll get to it” / “YAGNI” / “Code for Change” / “You can’t predict the future” / etc. • It’s just PHP ™ • Whatever issue you’ve run into, someone else has likely already hit it—and solved it—in Laravel What does Matt want you to remember?
100. One more thing!
101. My Offer https://enterpriselaravel.com/help-me
102. Resources https://enterpriselaravel.com/
103. This ain’t over…