- How do I install temporal/sdk in a Laravel application?
- Install the package with composer require temporal/sdk. The Clients component requires the grpc PHP extension, while Workers require RoadRunner, which you can fetch with ./vendor/bin/rr get. In Laravel, register the Temporal client and worker bindings through a service provider and configure your Task Queue and Temporal server address. The protobuf extension is recommended in production for better performance.
- Which PHP and Laravel versions are supported by temporal/sdk?
- The SDK is designed for PHP 8.1 and newer and integrates cleanly with Laravel's service container. Laravel compatibility is high because clients and workers can be registered via a ServiceProvider and resolved through dependency injection. Check the package's Composer constraints for the exact Laravel framework versions supported by your chosen release.
- Can I use Temporal PHP SDK instead of Laravel queues?
- You can use Temporal to replace or augment Laravel queues for long-running, stateful, or multi-step business logic. Temporal workflows survive crashes and retries and are better suited to distributed transactions and complex orchestration than simple queued jobs. Laravel queues remain a good fit for short, fire-and-forget tasks. Many teams use both, starting Temporal workflows from Laravel code while keeping simpler jobs on the queue.
- How do Temporal Workflows and Activities integrate with Laravel's service container?
- Register Temporal clients and workers in a Laravel ServiceProvider so they can be resolved through the container. Activities can use Laravel services such as logging, database access, and cache because they run as normal PHP code in RoadRunner workers. Workflow code should stay deterministic and avoid direct I/O, so put side effects in activities. This lets you coordinate Laravel database transactions or events from workflow orchestration.
- What PHP extensions and worker runtime does temporal/sdk need?
- The Clients component requires ext-grpc, and the Workers component requires RoadRunner. ext-protobuf is recommended for both clients and workers in production to improve performance. Download RoadRunner with ./vendor/bin/rr get before starting workers. The SDK's table summarizes these requirements clearly.
- Is Temporal PHP SDK production-ready for Laravel applications?
- Yes, the SDK is aimed at mission-critical Laravel applications that need durable, fault-tolerant orchestration. Temporal persists workflow state so workflows can survive crashes, retries, and infrastructure failures, and workers can scale horizontally. Expect tradeoffs such as external state storage latency, PHP worker cold starts, and a workflow/activity paradigm shift. Use ext-protobuf where possible and monitor workers in production.
- What is CloudClient in Temporal PHP SDK v2.19 used for?
- CloudClient exposes the Temporal Cloud Operations API through the SDK's gRPC layer, so Laravel code can list namespaces, check quotas and usage, and automate provisioning. It is cloud-only and targets Temporal Cloud at saas-api.tmprl.cloud:443. Self-hosted deployments do not gain this feature and still carry the higher roadrunner-api-dto dependency floor. It fits naturally into Artisan commands or admin dashboards.
- How does Temporal PHP SDK v2.19 improve fan-out and protobuf handling?
- The loop layer drains its once-callback queue in linear rather than quadratic time, which helps workflows that fan out widely with large Promise::all or Promise::any batches. For teams on ext-protobuf 3.x, repeated protobuf fields are now correctly unwrapped from the C extension. This removes a class of silent serialization defects.
- How do I test Temporal workflows in a Laravel project?
- Use the Temporal CLI to run a local dev server and Buggregator for inspecting workflows and activities during development. The SDK README includes Testing and Dev environment sections, and you can run workers locally with RoadRunner. Keep workflow code deterministic and test activities separately where possible.
- What are the drawbacks of using Temporal PHP SDK with Laravel?
- Adopting Temporal requires a paradigm shift from Laravel jobs and queues to workflow and activity patterns, which may mean refactoring monolithic logic. Workflows store state externally in the Temporal server, adding latency and eventual consistency tradeoffs, and PHP workers may experience cold starts. Temporal-specific constructs can create vendor lock-in, and v2.19 adds a flag-gated await semantics change plus a higher dependency floor. For simpler asynchronous tasks, Laravel queues or Horizon may be a lighter alternative.