Laravel Automations

serversideup/php has a "Laravel Automations" script that helps automate common tasks to maintain your Laravel application and improve it's performance. By default, the script is DISABLED. We only recommend enabling this script in production environments.

What the script does

In order for this script to run,AUTORUN_ENABLED must be set to true. Once the main part of the script is enabled, you can control the individual tasks by setting the corresponding environment variables to true or false. See our variable reference document for more details.

Environment Variable	Default	Description
`AUTORUN_ENABLED`	`false`	Enables the Laravel Automations script. ℹ️ Note: This must be set to `true` for the script to run.
`AUTORUN_DEBUG`	`false`	Enables a special debug mode, specifically for the Laravel Automations script.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_CONFIG_CACHE`	`true`	`php artisan config:cache`: Caches the configuration files into a single file.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_EVENT_CACHE`	`true`	`php artisan event:cache`: Creates a manifest of all your application's events and listeners.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_MIGRATION`	`true`	`php artisan migrate`: Runs migrations.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_MIGRATION_ISOLATION`	`false`	Run your migrations with the `--isolated` flag. ℹ️ Note: Requires Laravel v9.38.0+
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_MIGRATION_TIMEOUT`	`30`	Number of seconds to wait for database connection before timing out during migrations.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_OPTIMIZE`	`true`	`php artisan optimize`: Optimizes the application.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_SEED`	`false`	`php artisan db:seed`: Runs the default seeder. ℹ️ Note: Set to `true` to run the default seeder. If you want to run a custom seeder, set this to the name of the seeder class.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_ROUTE_CACHE`	`true`	`php artisan route:cache`: Caches the routes.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_STORAGE_LINK`	`true`	`php artisan storage:link`: Creates a symbolic link from `public/storage` to `storage/app/public`.
`AUTORUN_LARAVEL_VIEW_CACHE`	`true`	`php artisan view:cache`: Caches the views.

Database Connection Checks

Before running migrations, the script performs database connection checks to ensure the database is ready. It will:

Clear the Laravel configuration cache before attempting migrations
Try to connect to the database for up to AUTORUN_LARAVEL_MIGRATION_TIMEOUT seconds (default: 30)
Show detailed connection attempts when AUTORUN_DEBUG is enabled

php artisan storage:link

Creates a symbolic link from public/storage to storage/app/public.

php artisan migrate

Before running migrations, we ensure the database is online and ready to accept connections. By default, we will wait 30 seconds before timing out.

You can enable the --isolated flag by setting AUTORUN_LARAVEL_MIGRATION_ISOLATION to true, which will ensure no other containers are running a migration.

Special Notes for Isolated Migrations:

Requires Laravel v9.38.0+
Your application must be using the memcached, redis, dynamodb, database, file, or array cache driver as your application's default cache driver. In addition, all servers must be communicating with the same central cache server.

php artisan optimize

Laravel comes with an artisan command called optimize, which will optimize the application by caching the configuration, routes, views, and events all in one command.

You can disable any cache features by setting the corresponding environment variable to false (for example, AUTORUN_LARAVEL_CONFIG_CACHE would disable configuration caching).

If your application is running Laravel v11.38.0 or higher, we will utilize the optimize --except parameter to exclude any cache features you have disabled. Otherwise, we will run the individual optimizations separately.

It's possible to disable the optimize command by setting AUTORUN_LARAVEL_OPTIMIZE to false, but the major advantage of using the optimize command is other dependencies may hook into this action and run other commands.

php artisan config:cache

This command caches all configuration files into a single file, which can then be quickly loaded by Laravel. Once the configuration is cache, the .env file will no longer be loaded.

Read more about configuration caching →

php artisan db:seed

This command runs the default seeder. If you want to run a custom seeder, set AUTORUN_LARAVEL_SEED to the name of the seeder class.

php artisan route:cache

This command caches the routes, dramatically decrease the time it takes to register all of your application's routes. After running this command, your cached routes file will be loaded on every request.

php artisan view:cache

This command caches all of the views in your application, which can greatly decrease the time it takes to render your views.

php artisan event:cache

This command creates a manifest of all your application's events and listeners, which can greatly speed up the process of registering them with Laravel.

Debugging the AUTORUN script

It's very important to understand the nature of how containerized environments work when debugging the AUTORUN script. In some cases, some users may become frustrated when they push an update but their changes are never deployed.

In most cases, this is due to a bug in their application code that causes a migration or some other process to fail.

If a failure occurs in the Laravel Automations script, it will exit with a non-zero exit code -- preventing the container from starting.

If you are experiencing issues, you can enable the AUTORUN_DEBUG environment variable to get more detailed ouput of what could be going wrong.

If you need even more information, you can set LOG_OUTPUT_LEVEL to debug to get A TON of output of what's exactly happening.

Preventing issues with the AUTORUN script

Ensure you are running the latest version of serversideup/php
Ensure you have dependencies installed before calling this script
Use automated testing to catch issues before deploying

Introduction

Getting Started

Guide

Laravel

Customizing The Image

Reference