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Spike Laravel Package
opcodesio/spike
Spike is a Laravel performance monitoring package that helps you spot bottlenecks by tracking slow requests, queries, and exceptions in a built-in dashboard, making it easier to diagnose issues and keep your application running smoothly.
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Frequently asked questions about Spike
- How do I install Spike in a Laravel application?
- Install it with Composer using composer require opcodesio/spike, then publish the package config and migrations and run php artisan migrate. The service provider is auto-discovered, so no manual registration is normally needed. After that, open the dashboard route the package registers to confirm data is being captured.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does Spike support?
- The supported version matrix is defined in the package's composer.json, so check the require and require-dev blocks before installing. Because Spike hooks into Laravel's request lifecycle and query events, test on your exact framework version rather than assuming compatibility with older LTS releases. If you are pinned to an older Laravel or PHP version, verify against the repository's release notes first.
- What exactly does Spike monitor in a Laravel app?
- Spike records slow requests, slow database queries, and exceptions, then presents them in its own dashboard so you can see where time is being spent. The goal is bottleneck diagnosis rather than full APM tracing: you get the outliers that matter instead of a firehose of every event. This makes it most useful for teams that want quick answers about which endpoint or query regressed.
- How much overhead does Spike add in production?
- Any in-process monitor that writes request, query, and exception records adds some cost, mostly from database writes, so expect a small but non-zero overhead on every request. You should tune thresholds and sampling in the config, and prune stored entries on a schedule so tables do not grow without bounds. Benchmark on a staging environment with your real traffic pattern before enabling it everywhere.
- How do I configure which requests or queries Spike records?
- The published config file is where you control thresholds, ignored paths, and what data gets captured. Exclude health-check endpoints, asset routes, and noisy admin URLs so the dashboard stays readable. If a settings key is undocumented, read the package source directly, since third-party tutorials for a young package are unlikely to exist.
- Where does Spike store its monitoring data, and how do I prune it?
- Spike ships publishable migrations, which means it writes to its own tables in your application database rather than to an external service. That keeps setup simple but puts the retention burden on you, so schedule pruning or truncation as part of your regular maintenance routine. Review the migration files before running them to confirm they are additive and do not touch existing tables.
- Is Spike a replacement for Laravel Telescope or Debugbar?
- Not really. Telescope and Debugbar are local development tools that give you exhaustive per-request insight while you are building, whereas Spike is aimed at keeping a lightweight, always-on record of slow requests, queries, and exceptions. Many teams run Telescope in local environments and a production-oriented monitor like Spike on live apps. If you need full distributed tracing across services, neither tool is the right fit.
- Is Spike free, or do I need the Pro version?
- The package uses an open-core model: the spike-free repository is the MIT-licensed core, with additional capability expected in a paid tier. Before designing around it, check which features live where, since operational features such as retention, alerting, or reporting may sit behind the paywall. The MIT core is forkable and auditable, but that guarantee does not extend to the commercial tier.
- How do I verify Spike is actually capturing data?
- Trigger a deliberately slow route or run an inefficient query in a staging environment, then check the dashboard for the corresponding entry. Confirm that the package's scheduled cleanup and any background jobs are registered, because a missing schedule will quietly bloat your tables. If nothing appears, check that the middleware or event listeners are active for that route and that your config thresholds are not filtering everything out.
- Who maintains Spike, and is it safe to depend on in production?
- Spike is a single-vendor package with a small open-source footprint, so all maintenance, security response, and roadmap decisions sit with one organisation. That is a real concentration risk for a production dependency, although the MIT license on the free core means you can audit, fork, and patch it yourself if needed. Verify current commit activity, issue response times, and release history on the repository before committing, and keep an eye on your Laravel upgrade path.
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