How to clear Laravel's cache in a nutshell

Introduction to clearing Laravel’s cache

When in doubt, clear the cache. In this article, you’ll learn about how to clear every cache Laravel uses.

To clear the cache in Laravel, run php artisan optimize:clear. This works no matter which cache driver you are using. It will also clear the bootstrap files (events, compiled, config, routes, and views).

Now that we got this out of the way, let me remind you that Laravel has many kinds of caches. The framework offers a command for every variety of cache that you can use to enjoy a more granular level of control.

The optimize:clear command in action.

Clear all caches in Laravel

As we saw, the one-stop solution to clear the cache in Laravel is the command php artisan optimize:clear, which clears the following caches:

The config cache.
The bootstrap cache.
The auto-discovered events cache.
The application cache.
The routes cache.
The views cache.

Clear Laravel’s application cache

To clear Laravel’s application cache, run php artisan cache:clear. Whether you are using files, Redis, or memcached, it will be wiped clean.

You can also remove one particular value from the cache using php artisan cache:forget <key> [store]. That’s handy when you’re trying to fix something without disrupting everything else.

And, the cherry on top, you can also clear the cache for a given tag using php artisan cache:clear --tags some-tag,some-other-tag.

Programmatically clear Laravel’s application cache

To programmatically clear Laravel’s application cache, use the Cache facade.

You can forget a given key:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache;

Cache::forget('some-key');

Or flush the cache in its entirety:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache;

Cache::flush();

And, if you don’t want to import one more class, you can use the cache() helper:

cache()->forget('some-key');
cache()->flush();

Clear Laravel’s config cache

To clear Laravel’s config cache, run php artisan config:clear. The bootstrap/cache/config.php file will be deleted, and your fresh config settings will take over.

Clear Laravel’s auto-discovered events cache

To clear Laravel’s auto-discovered events cache, run php artisan event:clear will delete the bootstrap/cache/events.php file. Now Laravel can discover all your shiny new listeners.

Learn more about Laravel’s automatic event discovery.

Clear Laravel’s routes cache

To clear Laravel’s routes caches, run php artisan route:clear. Laravel will remove bootstrap/cache/routes-v7.php. Your new routes are now live and ready to be explored.

Clear Laravel’s scheduled tasks cache

To clear Laravel’s scheduled tasks cache, run php artisan schedule:clear-cache to wipe the slate clean.

Here’s a word of caution: Unless you have good reasons, it’s not advised to run this command in a production environment. Want to know why? Check out Laravel’s guide on preventing task overlaps.

Clear Laravel’s views cache

To clear Laravel’s views cache, run php artisan view:clear. The framework will empty the content of storage/views.

Bonus: turn off Laravel’s application cache

To turn off Laravel’s application cache, change the CACHE_DRIVER environment variable to null.

CACHE_DRIVER=null

This action doesn’t clear the cache but prevents anything from being cached or being retrieved from it.

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