Laravel Reverb: Seamless Real-Time Communication

Laravel Reverb: The Ultimate Native WebSocket Solution for Real-Time Apps

Laravel Reverb is a powerful WebSocket server built natively into Laravel, enabling real-time communication between servers and clients with minimal setup. Designed for high performance and scalability, it seamlessly integrates with Laravel’s event broadcasting system, eliminating the need for third-party services like Pusher or Soketi.

Whether you’re developing live chat applications, real-time notifications, or interactive tools, Laravel Reverb simplifies the process by delivering instant updates efficiently. With the flexibility of PHP and the power of Laravel, developers can enhance user experiences with real-time data synchronization.

Why Use Laravel Reverb?

• Native Laravel Integration – No dependency on external WebSocket providers.
• High-Performance & Efficient – Optimized for real-time messaging at scale.
• Laravel Horizon Compatibility – Works smoothly with Laravel Horizon for queue management.
• Scalable Architecture – Supports horizontal scaling for handling high-traffic applications.
• Secure Authentication – Utilizes Laravel’s built-in authentication system for secure WebSocket connections.

How Laravel Reverb Works

Laravel Reverb acts as a WebSocket server, maintaining persistent client connections across browsers, mobile apps, and other platforms. When an event is broadcast using PHP Artisan, Reverb instantly pushes it to subscribed clients, ensuring real-time updates.

• A client connects to the Laravel Reverb WebSocket server.
• The server broadcasts an event (e.g., a new message or notification).
• Reverb delivers the event instantly to all subscribed clients.

Install Laravel Reverb

1. Run the following command in your console and choose the Yes option for any of the prompts that show up:

php artisan install: broadcasting

2. Next, open two new terminals to start up the reverb server and also run the client side.

php artisan reverb: start

3. The reverb server is usually run on the 8080 port by default. You can see that in your console. If you need to specify a custom host or port, you may do so via the –host and– port options when starting the server like so:

php artisan reverb: start –host=127.0.0.1 –port=9000

4. Run Vite to ensure any changes on the client are hot reloaded & instant.

npm run dev

The BROADCAST_CONNECTION has been set to use reverb. Alternative broadcast drivers are pusher, ably, and log.
One more thing. Open up resources/js/echo.js file:

5. After that, please start the reverb websocket server using the command below

php artisan reverb: start