Olusola Ojewunmi

Posted on Dec 15

How to Build Applications That Survive the Real World

#laravel #devops #webdev #backend

A Practical Guide to Production-Ready Engineering (Using Laravel for Illustrative Examples)

Most applications don't fail because the code is wrong. They fail because the supporting guardrails—the unsexy, invisible, operational foundations—were never built.

I've seen it happen more times than I'd like to admit: a team ships a beautiful feature, users love it, and then—without warning—everything falls apart. Not because of a bug in the login flow, but because nobody thought about what happens when the database fills up, or when a third-party API changes its response format overnight.

"Production ready" is not an engineering badge, it's a survival strategy. It means your application can survive the chaos of the real world: traffic spikes, disk failures, malicious actors, and the inevitable 3 AM emergency.

This article is a practical checklist of the non-functional requirements that separate hobby projects from production-grade systems. While the concepts apply to any language or framework, I've included Laravel examples to show how to implement them effectively.

TL;DR: The 10 Production Essentials

✅ Logging & Error Monitoring
✅ Backups & Disaster Recovery
✅ Queue Management & Job Failures
✅ Caching Strategy
✅ Security Hygiene
✅ Encrypting Sensitive Data
✅ Environment Configuration & Secrets
✅ Monitoring & Observability
✅ Automated Testing
✅ Deployment & CI/CD

1. Logging & Error Monitoring

The Principle

Running a production application without proper logging is like flying a plane without instruments. You can't troubleshoot what you can't see, and you can't prevent what you can't detect.

Logging is your application's black box recorder. When a user says "it's broken," your logs should tell you exactly why, without you needing to reproduce it blindly.

Laravel Implementation Example

Laravel makes structured logging straightforward. You have two main approaches:

Option A: Contextual Manual Logging

Don't just log text; log context.

use Exception;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;

try {
    $payment = PaymentGateway::charge($order);
} catch (Exception $e) {
    Log::error('Payment processing failed', [
        'order_id' => $order->id,
        'amount' => $order->total,
        'error' => $e->getMessage(),
        'user_id' => auth()->id(),
    ]);

    throw $e;
}

Option B: Clean Global Error Handling (Laravel 11+)

Define global exception reporting rules in bootstrap/app.php:

// bootstrap/app.php
use Illuminate\Foundation\Configuration\Exceptions;

return Application::configure(basePath: dirname(__DIR__))
    ->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
        $exceptions->report(function (PaymentFailedException $e) {
            Log::critical('Payment Failure detected', [
                'details' => $e->getMessage(),
            ]);
        });
    })
    ->create();

Pro Tip: Don't rely on logs alone. Consider:

Sentry
Honeybadger
Rollbar
Laravel Nightwatch
Laravel Pulse

2. Backups & Disaster Recovery

The Principle

Backups are not a "nice to have"—they are the difference between a recoverable mistake and a company-ending event.

An untested backup is not a backup; it is a false sense of security.

Hard drives fail. Developers delete the wrong table. Hackers encrypt data. If you cannot restore your system within one hour, you do not have a disaster recovery plan.

Laravel Implementation Example

Use spatie/laravel-backup:

// app/Console/Kernel.php
protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
    $schedule->command('backup:run')->daily()->at('01:00');
    $schedule->command('backup:monitor')->daily()->at('03:00');
}

Quarterly drill: Restore your system from scratch. If you haven't tested your restore… assume it's broken.

3. Queue Management & Job Failures

The Principle

Queues handle emails, reports, and long-running tasks. When misconfigured, they become silent saboteurs.

Common failure modes:

Workers die — jobs pile up
Third-party outage — retry storms
Slow jobs — queue starvation

Laravel Implementation Example

Use Laravel Horizon for Redis queues.

use Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldQueue;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Notification;
use Throwable;

class ProcessOrderNotification implements ShouldQueue
{
    public $tries = 3;
    public $backoff = [60, 300, 900]; // 1m, 5m, 15m

    public function failed(Throwable $exception)
    {
        Log::error('Order notification failed permanently', [
            'order_id' => $this->order->id,
            'error' => $exception->getMessage(),
        ]);

        Notification::route('slack', env('SLACK_WEBHOOK'))
            ->notify(new JobFailedNotification($this->order, $exception));
    }
}

4. Caching Strategy

The Principle

Caching is not optional — it is a scalability prerequisite. Without it:

Databases melt
Response times degrade
Infrastructure costs explode

Laravel Implementation Example

$stats = Cache::remember('dashboard-stats', 3600, function () {
    return [
        'total_revenue' => Order::sum('total'),
        'active_users' => User::where('active', true)->count(),
    ];
});

// Invalidate when data changes
Cache::forget('dashboard-stats');

A slow system is a broken system.

5. Security Hygiene

The Principle

Security is a mindset. Most breaches come from basic oversights:

Unvalidated input
Exposed .env files
Unsafe SQL
Mass assignment mistakes

Laravel Implementation Example

// SAFE
$users = DB::select(
    'SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = :email',
    ['email' => $request->email]
);

// UNSAFE
$users = DB::select(
    "SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '{$request->email}'"
);

6. Encrypting Sensitive Data

The Principle

Some data is so sensitive that even if your database leaks, attackers should learn nothing.

Examples:

BVN
NIN
Passport numbers
Bank account numbers

Laravel Implementation Example

class UserProfile extends Model
{
    protected $casts = [
        'bvn' => 'encrypted',
        'passport_number' => 'encrypted',
        'bank_details' => 'encrypted:array',
    ];
}

Laravel handles encryption and decryption automatically.

7. Environment Configuration & Secrets

The Principle

Leaking credentials is one of the fastest ways to destroy a business.

Never:

Commit .env
Hardcode secrets
Share production keys in Slack/WhatsApp

Laravel Implementation Example

php artisan config:cache

Enforce required variables:

use Exception;

public function boot()
{
    if (app()->environment('production')) {
        if (!env('STRIPE_SECRET') || !env('DB_PASSWORD')) {
            throw new Exception('Critical environment variables are missing!');
        }
    }
}

8. Monitoring & Observability

The Principle

Monitoring is your system's heartbeat. Without it, failures remain invisible until customers complain.

I learned this the hard way.

A Real Incident: Ignoring Alerts Has a Price

I set up daily Honeybadger health checks for our Laravel API. Every midnight, I received a "200 OK" email. It became routine — background noise.

One night at 3 AM, I woke up, saw multiple Honeybadger emails, assumed they were noise, and went back to sleep.

A couple of minutes after 8 AM, during our morning standup, the CEO joined the call and dropped a statement developers everywhere dread hearing:

"The entire app is down."

Our server had crashed hours earlier, presumably very late during the previous night. We scrambled to migrate the database and redeploy under pressure.

Only later did I re-check the ignored emails—they were warnings that the app was unreachable, not success notifications.

Two lessons carved into my memory:

Silence is not safety. Daily health checks matter—make them impossible to ignore.
Alerts require action. If an alert doesn't require action, delete it.

Laravel Implementation Example

// routes/web.php
Route::get('/health', function () {
    return Spatie\Health\Health::check();
});

Connect /health to an uptime monitor (UptimeRobot, Oh Dear).

9. Automated Testing

The Principle

Untested code is legacy code the moment you write it. Tests are not about perfection—they're about confidence.

You cannot deploy with confidence if you don't know what will break.

Common excuses (and why they're wrong):

"We don't have time" — You'll spend 10x more time debugging production
"Tests slow us down" — Manual testing is slower and less reliable
"Our code is too complex to test" — That's a design problem, not a testing problem

Laravel Implementation Example

Feature Tests (Test Critical Paths)

// tests/Feature/OrderFlowTest.php
class OrderFlowTest extends TestCase
{
    public function test_user_can_complete_checkout()
    {
        $user = User::factory()->create();
        $product = Product::factory()->create(['price' => 100]);

        $response = $this->actingAs($user)
            ->post('/orders', [
                'product_id' => $product->id,
                'quantity' => 2,
            ]);

        $response->assertStatus(201);
        $this->assertDatabaseHas('orders', [
            'user_id' => $user->id,
            'total' => 200,
        ]);
    }

    public function test_checkout_fails_with_insufficient_stock()
    {
        $product = Product::factory()->create(['stock' => 1]);

        $response = $this->actingAs(User::factory()->create())
            ->post('/orders', [
                'product_id' => $product->id,
                'quantity' => 5,
            ]);

        $response->assertStatus(422);
        $response->assertJsonValidationErrors('quantity');
    }
}

What to Test (Priority Order)

Critical business flows — Checkout, payments, authentication
Data integrity — Money calculations, user permissions, data validation
Third-party integrations — API failures, timeouts, fallback behavior
Edge cases — Empty carts, expired sessions, invalid input

Run Tests in CI/CD

# GitHub Actions
- name: Run Tests
  run: php artisan test --parallel

The Golden Rule: If it breaks in production, write a test for it.

10. Deployment & CI/CD

The Principle

Manual deployments fail. CI/CD ensures safe, predictable, repeatable releases.

If your deployment involves SSH + git pull, you're one command away from an outage.

Laravel Implementation Example

# GitHub Actions Snippet
- name: Deploy to Production
  run: |
    ssh user@server 'cd /var/www/app && git pull origin main'
    ssh user@server 'cd /var/www/app && composer install --no-dev'
    ssh user@server 'cd /var/www/app && php artisan migrate --force'
    ssh user@server 'cd /var/www/app && php artisan config:cache'
    ssh user@server 'cd /var/www/app && php artisan queue:restart'

Summary: Building for the Real World

Production readiness isn't about adding complexity—it's about adding reliability. Every item on this checklist exists because someone, somewhere, learned a painful lesson the hard way.

Modern frameworks like Laravel have made production readiness easier than ever.

With a few packages and the right discipline, you can build systems that are:

Resilient
Observable
Secure
Maintainable
Professional

A Practical Adoption Path

Week 1: Logging & Monitoring
Week 2: Backups
Week 3: Queue Management
Week 4: Security & Encryption
Week 5: Health Checks
Week 6: Automated Testing
Week 7: CI/CD Pipeline

The Real Cost of Neglect

No backups — permanent data loss
No monitoring — silent failures
No encryption — possible breach of confidential user data and lawsuits
No queue handling — stuck orders
No testing — production bugs and regressions
No CI/CD — broken deployments

The time you invest in production readiness pays dividends every single day your application runs. It's the difference between a side project and a sustainable business. Between a stressful on-call rotation and peaceful weekends. Between "it works" and "it works reliably."

Your Application Deserves Better

If you're building something that matters—something people depend on, something that generates revenue, something that stores user data—you owe it to yourself and your users to build it right.

Start today. Your future self will thank you.

💬 Discussion Questions:

Which of these 10 items do you struggle with most?
Have you had a production incident that taught you a hard lesson?
What's your #1 production-readiness tip?

Drop your thoughts in the comments—I read and respond to every one.

Found this helpful? Follow me for more practical guides on building production-grade applications. Have questions about implementing any of these practices? Ask below!