In this episode, we dive into the basics of caching in Laravel and why it's such a big deal when you want your app to be speedy. We start by looking at Laravel's built-in caching features, talking about how most of the time you can just cache your data, return it, and enjoy faster load times.
We cover the different caching drivers you can pick from (like file, Redis, or Memcached) and even switch our example app to use file caching just to keep things simple. You'll learn how to set up caching in your code with the cache()->remember() helper, how cache keys and durations work, and what actually happens on the first and subsequent requests.
Next, we take practical steps to cache data that's fetched from the database—showing how database queries disappear and your request duration drops as the data gets pulled from cache instead. We also look at how to manually clear the cache both via Artisan commands and in your application code.
But it doesn't stop there! We discuss real-world situations where caching can get tricky—for example, when you're paginating or filtering by user. You'll see how caching without considering things like user IDs or page numbers can lead to weird issues where the wrong data is shown. We then fix this by making dynamic cache keys that include those variables, so each user and page gets its own cache entry.
Finally, we mention some of the limitations of basic caching, especially around clearing out specific cached entries when you have lots of combinations (like different users and pages). This sets us up perfectly for the next episode, where we'll look at cache tags and smarter cache invalidation strategies. By the end, you'll see how caching can massively speed up your Laravel app while also learning about the gotchas along the way!