Environments

Introduction

Laravel Cloud applications can be made up of many environments, such as “production”, “staging”, or even short-lived environments used for trialing new features you’re developing for your application. Compute infrastructure, resources, and deployment settings are unique to each environment, allowing you to fine-tune each environment based on its purpose. For example, you might wish to assign small Flex compute instances that scale to zero to your staging environment, while larger, always-on compute instances are assigned to your production environment.

Build and deploy commands

You may define how your application is built during deployment from the Deployments section of your environment settings.

Build commands

Build commands allow you to customize the build process for your application during deployment.

Typically, your Laravel build command will install your Composer and npm dependencies and compile your application’s assets:

composer install --no-dev && npm run build

Running php artisan optimize or php artisan config:cache should be done during the build process, not during the deploy process.

Private Composer packages

To allow the installation of private Composer packages, you will need to configure your application’s Composer HTTP authentication credentials for each package using the composer config command. You should add this command to your build commands prior to invoking composer install:

composer config http-basic.composer.fluxui.dev your-username your-license-key

composer install --no-dev

Typically, your Symfony build command will install Composer dependencies and compile your application’s assets:

composer install --no-dev && php bin/console asset-map:compile

Private Composer packages

composer config http-basic.example.com your-username your-license-key

composer install --no-dev

Typically, your Next.js build command will install Node dependencies and compile your application:

npm ci && npm run build

Typically, your Nuxt build command will install Node dependencies and compile your application:

npm ci && npm run build

Typically, your Node.js build command will install dependencies and compile your application:

npm ci && npm run build

Laravel Cloud pre-fills your Go build command to compile a static binary:

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -trimpath -ldflags="-s -w" -o app .

The default start command, ./app, runs the binary this build command produces. If you change the output path or binary name, update the start command to match.

Laravel Cloud installs your Python dependencies automatically during the build, choosing uv, Poetry, Pipenv, or pip to match whichever lockfile is present. A build command usually isn’t required; add one only for an extra step, such as:

python manage.py collectstatic --noinput

Build commands must complete within 15 minutes or they will time out.

Dynamic environment variables

Build commands run with your environment’s variables loaded from a .env file in the build context, so you may append to that file to derive a variable during the build:

# Adding a dynamic environment variable
echo "MY_DYNAMIC_VAR=value" >> .env

JavaScript applications using Node.js, Bun, or Deno, along with Go and Python applications, receive their variables on the application process rather than from a .env file. A variable appended during the build is visible to later build commands but not to your running application. Add it under your environment’s environment variables instead.

Deploy commands

Your environment’s “Deploy Commands” are run on your Laravel Cloud infrastructure just before a new deployment goes “live”. Typically, these commands will be used to migrate your environment’s database. Unlike build commands, changes made to the filesystem by deploy commands will not be persisted to your application.

Deploy commands must complete within 15 minutes or they will time out.

Unnecessary build and deploy commands

This section applies to Laravel applications.

The following commands are either automatically handled by Laravel Cloud or should not be run during deployment:

php artisan queue:restart - Queue workers are automatically restarted after each deployment
php artisan horizon:terminate - Horizon processes are automatically managed during deployments
php artisan optimize:clear - This clears the cache and can cause unexpected behavior, especially related to the queue
php artisan storage:link - The symbolic link won’t persist as changes made during deploy commands are not saved. Use Laravel Object Storage for persistent file storage instead.

Typically, your deploy commands should only include database migrations and other essential post-deployment tasks.

Environment settings

Environment variables

Within your environment’s settings, the environment variables section allows you to customize the variables available to your environment.

In addition to injecting your custom environment variables, Laravel Cloud will automatically inject a variety of environment variables into your environment on your behalf, including any credentials necessary to connect to Laravel Cloud resources like databases, key-value storage, or object storage.

For sensitive values that should be shared across multiple environments, use Secrets Manager to create encrypted organization-level secrets and link them to the environments that need them.

Custom environment variables take priority and will override any automatically injected environment variables.

After you change an environment’s variables, redeploy the environment for the changes to take effect.

How variables reach your application

Laravel Cloud delivers your environment’s variables differently depending on the runtime:

Laravel, Symfony
JavaScript
Go
Python

Laravel Cloud writes your variables to a .env file in your application’s root directory before your application starts, so the framework reads them the same way it does locally.

Laravel Cloud sets your variables on the application process, the way export does in a shell. Read them from process.env.

Laravel Cloud sets your variables on the application process, the way export does in a shell. Read them with os.Getenv. No .env file is written at runtime, so your application does not need a loader such as godotenv.

Laravel Cloud sets your variables on the application process, the way export does in a shell. Read them from os.environ — or, in a Django application, through your settings module as usual. No .env file is written at runtime, so your application does not need a loader such as python-dotenv.

Your build commands are a separate step and always receive the variables through a .env file in the build context, whatever the runtime. That file is a build-time artifact; the values your application reads once it is running come from the process environment.

HTTP basic authentication

HTTP basic authentication allows you to protect an environment with a username and password before traffic reaches your application. This is useful for staging environments, private demos, preview environments, or sleeping environments that should not wake up because of unauthorized requests or automated bot traffic. You may enable HTTP basic authentication from your environment’s General Settings page in the Security section. When enabled, users can access the environment using the username admin and the password you set. Passwords must be between 5 and 32 characters and cannot contain the : character.

HTTP basic authentication is available on the Growth plan or higher. After enabling, disabling, or changing the password, a re-deployment is required in order for the changes to take effect.

Runtime

PHP runtime

You may select the PHP version that should be used by an environment on the environment’s General Settings page. After changing the PHP version, a re-deployment is required in order for the changes to take effect. See Runtimes for the supported PHP versions.

Node.js, Bun, and Deno runtimes

Next.js, Nuxt, TanStack Start, Express, and Hono applications run on the Node.js, Bun, or Deno runtime, detected automatically from the configuration files in your repository. See Runtimes for detection rules and supported versions. The Node.js version is selectable on the environment’s General Settings page; after changing it, a re-deployment is required for the change to take effect. Bun and Deno applications run on a fixed version and don’t offer version selection in the dashboard.

Go and Python runtimes

Go and Python applications are detected automatically from your repository: a go.mod file for Go, or a pyproject.toml, requirements.txt, Pipfile, or setup.py file for Python. Rather than a dashboard setting, Laravel Cloud reads the language version straight from your repository (the go directive in go.mod for Go; a .python-version file or the requires-python constraint in pyproject.toml for Python). See Runtimes for supported versions and what happens when a detected version isn’t one Laravel Cloud publishes.

PHP extensions

PHP extensions are only available for PHP runtime environments (Laravel and Symfony).

Laravel Cloud currently supports the following PHP extensions:

apcu, bcmath, calendar, Core, ctype, curl, date, dom, ev, excimer, exif,
fileinfo, filter, ftp, gd, gettext, gmp, grpc, hash, iconv, igbinary, imagick,
imap, intl, json, ldap, libxml, mbstring, mongodb, msgpack, mysqli,
mysqlnd, openssl, pcntl, pcre, PDO, pdo_mysql, pdo_pgsql, pdo_sqlite, pdo_sqlsrv,
Phar, posix, pspell, random, readline, redis, Reflection, session, shmop,
SimpleXML, soap, sockets, sodium, SPL, sqlite3, sqlsrv, standard, tokenizer, xml,
xmlreader, xmlwriter, xsl, Zend OPcache, zip, zlib.

You can also list the currently loaded extensions by running php -m using Laravel Cloud’s “Command” feature in your environment dashboard.

PHP memory limit

This section applies to PHP runtime environments (Laravel and Symfony).

Laravel Cloud allocates PHP memory dynamically based on a percentage of your instance’s total memory. If your application requires a specific amount, you can override this by defining a new memory_limit. You can override the default memory limit by adding configuration directly in your application code. The most common method is to update your public/index.php and your artisan file:

<?php

// Set memory limit to 512 MB...
ini_set('memory_limit', '512M');

// Or, remove memory limits entirely...
ini_set('memory_limit', -1);

Or, you can set the memory limit via build commands to avoid modifying your project’s source code:

# Add memory_limit to the top of the public/index.php file...
sed -i 's/<?php/<?php\nini_set('\''memory_limit'\'', '\''512M'\'');/g' public/index.php

# Add memory_limit to the top of the artisan file...
sed -i 's/<?php/<?php\nini_set('\''memory_limit'\'', '\''512M'\'');/g' artisan

Memory adjustments should be made early in your application’s lifecycle to ensure optimal performance. Excessive memory usage can negatively impact overall application efficiency. While setting the memory limit to -1 removes all memory restrictions, this option should be used with caution, especially in production environments, as it can lead to unpredictable behavior. For more information regarding PHP memory configuration, consult the official PHP documentation.

Cloud domains

Each Laravel Cloud environment is assigned a free laravel.cloud domain the first time it is deployed successfully. This makes it easy to test and build your application before attaching a custom domain. Laravel Cloud domains are constructed using a combination of your application and environment name. If either of these names are changed, the Laravel Cloud domain will be updated to reflect the changes. A redeployment is required for this change to take effect.

Custom domains

Of course, before shipping your application to the world, you will likely want to assign your own custom domain name to your production environment. Laravel Cloud will guide you through DNS configuration, verify domain ownership, and issue an SSL certificate automatically. For comprehensive documentation (DNS records, verification paths, wildcards, provider-specific guides, and plan limits), see Domains.

If your domain verification is taking longer than expected, check out our docs on verifying domains.

Stop and restart

To stop an environment, click the ”…” button next to the environment’s “Deploy” button. Then, click “Stop”. When you stop an environment, all App and Worker clusters within the environment will be shutdown. This means all web traffic, background processes, and scheduled tasks will stop processing. You will not be charged for the environment’s compute, but you will still be charged for any attached resources. You can restart the environment using the same dropdown menu. A full deployment is required to restart an environment.

Replicate

It is common for environments in the same application to have similar or identical resource and settings configurations. Therefore, when creating new environments, it is often more convenient to clone an existing environment and make changes rather than creating a new environment from scratch. To replicate an environment, click the ”…” button next to the environment’s “Deploy” button. Then, click “Replicate”. Confirm you are replicating the correct environment and Git branch, then enter a name for your new environment. By default, all General, Environment, and Deployment settings will be duplicated. You can optionally edit the default replication settings for compute and resources. The default replication behavior is:

Compute: duplicate all clusters at a smaller size, with Scale-to-Zero enabled
Database: create a new database cluster that scales to zero, or a new database within the same cluster if your database does not support scale-to-zero replication
Cache: create a new cache that scales to zero, or a new cache at the smallest available size if your cache does not support scale to zero
Object storage: create a new bucket
WebSockets: create a new WebSocket server

If you choose to share the cache instead, Cloud adds a REDIS_PREFIX environment variable set to application:environment: so each environment’s keys stay separate. If the environment runs Laravel Horizon, Cloud also sets HORIZON_PREFIX.

Review and edit the “Replication options” as needed before deploying your new environment. The defaults provided are a sensible balance between cost and performance, but may not be right for your application’s specific use case. Use extra care when replicating a production environment to avoid reusing resources in a way that will impact performance or interfere with queued jobs, sessions, or other application data.

To generate an isolated environment automatically for every pull request, use preview environments instead.

Commands

Laravel Cloud allows you to execute arbitrary shell commands directly in your environment. Navigate to your environment’s Commands tab to run one-time commands for any supported framework or runtime. For example, php artisan cache:clear in a Laravel application, php bin/console cache:clear in a Symfony application, node script.js in a Node.js application, ./app migrate in a Go application, or python manage.py shell in a Django application.

Commands should be non-interactive and may not run for more than 30 minutes.

Commands will be executed on any available instance in your environment.

Filesystem

Environment filesystems are ephemeral, meaning files may not persist across requests or jobs. New deployments or re-deployments will reset the filesystem. In addition, each replica of your compute cluster has its own filesystem. Thus, you should treat the filesystem as temporary, unshared disk space that is only consistent during a single request or job. The total disk space available on each replica is proportional to the compute / RAM of the cluster. Every 1GB of RAM is equal to 512MB of disk space. For example, a cluster with 2GB of RAM will have 1GB of ephemeral disk space available to it. If you exceed the available disk space, your application may crash and the deployment may need to restart. For persistent cache and session storage, PHP applications should use the redis or database drivers via a cache or database resource. JavaScript applications should use their framework’s equivalent persistent session and cache adapter backed by one of these resources. Go and Python applications should connect directly to a cache or database resource using the injected REDIS_URL or DATABASE_URL connection string. For persistent file storage, use Laravel Cloud Object Storage.

Nightwatch integration

Nightwatch integration is currently available for Laravel applications only.

Laravel Cloud environments have built-in support for Laravel Nightwatch monitoring. Nightwatch provides deep insights into your application environment’s performance, exceptions, logs, and overall health.

Install Nightwatch package

Install the Laravel Nightwatch package in your application locally using Composer:

composer require laravel/nightwatch

Run composer require laravel/nightwatch on your local machine to update your composer.json and composer.lock files before deploying.

Connect Nightwatch

Click the Connect Nightwatch button in your environment dashboard.

Enable monitoring

Toggle Enable monitoring to activate Nightwatch for your environment.

Enter your Nightwatch token

Enter your Nightwatch token, which you can find in your Nightwatch application settings.

Enabling Nightwatch will automatically run the agent across all the App and Worker clusters in the environment. You can setup Nightwatch manually if you want the agent to run on specific instances.

When enabled, Laravel Cloud will automatically inject the following environment variables into your environment:

NIGHTWATCH_TOKEN=
NIGHTWATCH_REQUEST_SAMPLE_RATE=0.1
LOG_CHANNEL=stack
LOG_STACK=laravel-cloud-socket,nightwatch

You can override these variables in your environment variable settings if needed.

If you have previously configured Nightwatch manually with a background process, you must remove that process from every cluster before enabling the built-in integration to avoid issues with your environment.

Get started

Basics

Private Cloud

Resources

Monitoring

Billing

Other

Introduction

Build and deploy commands

Build commands

Private Composer packages

Private Composer packages

Dynamic environment variables

Deploy commands

Unnecessary build and deploy commands

Environment settings

Environment variables

How variables reach your application

HTTP basic authentication

Runtime

PHP runtime

Node.js, Bun, and Deno runtimes

Go and Python runtimes

PHP extensions

PHP memory limit

Cloud domains

Custom domains

Stop and restart

Replicate

Commands

Filesystem

Nightwatch integration

​Introduction

​Build and deploy commands

​Build commands

​Private Composer packages

​Private Composer packages

​Dynamic environment variables

​Deploy commands

​Unnecessary build and deploy commands

​Environment settings

​Environment variables

​How variables reach your application

​HTTP basic authentication

​Runtime

​PHP runtime

​Node.js, Bun, and Deno runtimes

​Go and Python runtimes

​PHP extensions

​PHP memory limit

​Cloud domains

​Custom domains

​Stop and restart

​Replicate

​Commands

​Filesystem

​Nightwatch integration

Introduction

Build and deploy commands

Build commands

Private Composer packages

Private Composer packages

Dynamic environment variables

Deploy commands

Unnecessary build and deploy commands

Environment settings

Environment variables

How variables reach your application

HTTP basic authentication

Runtime

PHP runtime

Node.js, Bun, and Deno runtimes

Go and Python runtimes

PHP extensions

PHP memory limit

Cloud domains

Custom domains

Stop and restart

Replicate

Commands

Filesystem

Nightwatch integration