Why caching reduces response times in Laravel - See It in Action

Why caching reduces response times in Laravel

📖 Scenario: You are building a Laravel web application that shows a list of popular books. Each time a user visits the page, the app fetches the book list from the database. To make the page load faster, you want to use caching to store the book list temporarily.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Laravel controller method that fetches a list of books from the database and caches the result. This will reduce response times by avoiding repeated database queries.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable with a list of books (simulate with an array)

Add a cache key name variable

Use Laravel's cache to store and retrieve the book list

Return the cached or fresh book list

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Caching is used in web apps to store frequently requested data temporarily. This avoids repeated slow database queries and makes pages load faster for users.

💼 Career

Understanding caching is important for backend developers to optimize app performance and improve user experience.

1

Create the initial book list data

Create a variable called $books and assign it an array with these exact values: 'The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice'.

Laravel

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class BookController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        // Create the books array
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to create an array with the exact book titles.

2

Add a cache key variable

Add a variable called $cacheKey and set it to the string 'popular_books' inside the index method.

Laravel

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class BookController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice'];
        // Define cache key
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use a simple string variable to hold the cache key name.

3

Use Laravel cache to store and retrieve the book list

Use Laravel's cache()->remember() method with $cacheKey and a closure that returns $books. Set the cache time to 60 seconds. Assign the result to a variable called $cachedBooks.

Laravel

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class BookController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice'];
        $cacheKey = 'popular_books';
        // Cache the books list for 60 seconds
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use cache()->remember() with a closure that returns the books array.

4

Return the cached book list

Add a return statement that returns the $cachedBooks variable from the index method.

Laravel

remember($cacheKey, 60, function () use ($books) {
            return $books;
        });
        // Return the cached books
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use a simple return statement to send the cached books back.