Making Varnish and Laravel play nice together

This package provides an easy way to work with Varnish 4 (or 5) in Laravel. It provides a route middleware that, when applied to a route, will make sure Varnish will cache the response no matter what. The package also contains a function to flush the Varnish cache from within the application.

Installation

We assume that you've already installed Varnish on your server. If not read this blogpost to learn how to install it.

You can install the package via composer:

composer require deltablue/laravel-varnish

The package will automatically register itself for Laravel 5.5+.

If you are using Laravel < 5.5, you also need to add Varnish\VarnishServiceProvider to your config/app.php providers array:

\DeltaBlue\Varnish\VarnishServiceProvider::class

Next if you use Laravel you must publish the config-file with:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="DeltaBlue\Varnish\VarnishServiceProvider" --tag="config"

and if you use Lumen, you must copy config/varnish.php file to your application config folder.

This is the contents of the published file:

return [
    /*
     * The hostname(s) this Laravel app is listening to.
     */
    'host' => ['example.com'],

    /*
     * The execution type to be used. Allowed values are 'command' or 'socket'.
     *
     * This will determine whether `varnishadm` or the varnish administrative socket
     * is used for a local or remote varnish instance, respectively.
     */
    'execution_type' => 'command',

    /*
     * The location of the file containing the administrative password.
     */
    'administrative_secret' => '/etc/varnish/secret',

    /*
     * The actual administrative password used in your varnish configuration.
     *
     * When using `execution_type` 'command', use `administrative_secret`
     * instead, as `varnishadm` expects the secret to be a file path.
     *
     * If you are using `execution_type` 'socket', both parameters are supported, but
     * `administrative_secret_string` will take precedence over `administrative_secret`.
     */
    'administrative_secret_string' => '',

    /*
     * The host where the administrative tasks may be sent to when
     * using execution_type 'socket'.
     */
    'administrative_host' => '127.0.0.1',

    /*
     * The port where the administrative tasks may be sent to.
     */
    'administrative_port' => 6082,

    /*
     * The default amount of minutes that content rendered using the `CacheWithVarnish`
     * middleware should be cached.
     */
    'cache_time_in_minutes' => 60 * 24,

    /*
     * The name of the header that triggers Varnish to cache the response.
     */
    'cacheable_header_name' => 'X-Cacheable',
];

In the published varnish.php config file you should set the host key to the right value. Also make sure that the execution_type is set to socket if you would like to use this command to flush the cache of a remote Varnish server. Set execution_type to command to use varnishadm on the local system.

In case you've set the execution_type to socket, you can either store the administrative secret in a file and set administrative_secret, as used by varnishadm, or provide the actual secret string in the administrative_secret_string variable.

Add the DeltaBlue\Varnish\Middleware\CacheWithVarnish middleware to the route middlewares.

For Laravel:

// app/Http/Kernel.php
protected $routeMiddleware = [
...
   'cacheable' => \DeltaBlue\Varnish\Middleware\CacheWithVarnish::class,
];

If you are using Lumen, you need to load config file before route middleware definition to your bootstrap/app.php:

$app->configure('varnish');
$app->routeMiddleware([
...
   'cacheable' => \DeltaBlue\Varnish\Middleware\CacheWithVarnish::class,
]);

Finally, you should add these lines to the vcl_backend_response function in your VCL (by default this is located at /etc/varnish/default.vcl on your server):

if (beresp.http.X-Cacheable ~ "1") {
    unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
}

We highly recommend using the VCL provided the varnish-5.0-configuration-templates repo made by Mattias Geniar.

Usage

Caching responses

The routes whose response should be cached should use the cacheable middleware.

// your routes file

//will be cached by Varnish
Route::group(['middleware' => 'cacheable'], function() {
    Route::get('/', 'HomeController@index');
    Route::get('/contact', 'ContactPageController@index');
});

//won't be cached by Varnish
Route::get('do-not-cache', 'AnotherController@index');

The amount of minutes that Varnish should cache this content can be configured in the cache_time_in_minutes key in the laravel-varnish.php config file. Alternatively you could also use a middleware parameter to specify that value.

// Varnish will cache the responses of the routes inside the group for 15 minutes
Route::group(['middleware' => 'cacheable:15'], function() {
   ...
)};

Behind the scenes the middleware will add an X-Cacheable and Cache-Control to the response. Varnish will remove all cookies from Laravel's response. So keep in mind that, because thelaravel_session cookie will be removed as well, sessions will not work on routes were the CacheWithVarnish middleware is applied.

Clearing cache from Varnish

There's an artisan command to flush the cache. This can come in handy in your deployment script.

php artisan varnish:flush

If execution_type is set to command, under the hood flushing the cache will call the sudo varnishadm. To make it work without any hassle make sure the command is run by a unix user that has sudo rights.

You can also do this in your code to flush the cache:

(new DeltaBlue\Varnish\Varnish())->flush();

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information what has changed recently.

Testing

$ composer test

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Credits

• Freek Van der Herten
• Mathias Aerts
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.