Speed Up Your Laravel App by Caching Categories Automatically

Introduction

Fetching categories from the database every time a page loads might sound simple, but it quickly becomes a performance bottleneck—especially when your app grows or traffic spikes.

Laravel provides a clean solution to this: caching your categories, and automatically refreshing that cache whenever a category is created, updated, or deleted.

In this guide, we’ll see how to implement it step-by-step so your categories always load instantly without stale data.

Step 1: Cache Categories When Needed

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache;
use App\Models\Category;
$categories = Cache::rememberForever('categories', function () {
    return Category::orderBy('name')->get();
});

Explanation

• rememberForever stores the categories indefinitely until manually cleared.
• The closure runs only once—the first time cache is empty.
• After that, categories are fetched directly from cache (no DB hit).

Step 2: Automatically Refresh Cache on Create, Update, or Delete

Whenever a category changes, we need to refresh the cache.

You can handle this easily in the Category model’s events.

namespace App\Models;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache;
class Category extends Model
{
    protected static function booted()
    {
        static::created(fn() => self::refreshCache());
        static::updated(fn() => self::refreshCache());
        static::deleted(fn() => self::refreshCache());
    }
    public static function refreshCache()
    {
        Cache::forget('categories');
        Cache::rememberForever('categories', function () {
            return self::orderBy('name')->get();
        });
    }
}

What this does:

• When any category is added, edited, or removed, cache is cleared.
• Immediately repopulates with the latest data.
• Your frontend always gets fresh, up-to-date categories—without extra DB load.

Step 3: Use Cached Categories Everywhere

$categories = Cache::get('categories');

Or better yet, use a global helper or a view composer:

View::composer('*', function ($view) {
    $view->with('categories', Cache::get('categories'));
});

Pro Tip: Use Tags (Optional)

If you have multiple cache sections, you can use cache tags for better grouping:

Cache::tags(['categories'])->rememberForever('all', function () {
    return Category::all();
});
Cache::tags(['categories'])->flush(); // to clear all related cache