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Reliability Analyzers ​

28 analyzers ensuring your application handles errors gracefully, maintains uptime, and prevents runtime failures.

Overview ​

Reliability analyzers focus on preventing runtime errors, ensuring proper configuration, validating dependencies, and maintaining application stability. These analyzers help catch issues before they cause production outages or user-facing errors.

Key Analyzers ​

Configuration & Environment ​

Cache Prefix Configuration

Ensures cache prefix is set to avoid collisions

High

Cache Status

Validates cache connectivity and functionality

Critical

Composer Validation

Ensures composer.json is valid and follows best practices

Critical

Database Status

Ensures database connections are accessible and functioning

Critical

Environment Example Documentation

Ensures all environment variables used in .env are documented in .env.example for team collaboration

Medium

Environment File Existence

Ensures .env file exists, is readable, not empty, and checks for broken symlinks

Critical

Environment Variables Complete

Ensures all required environment variables from .env.example are defined in .env

Critical

Maintenance Mode Status

Checks if the application is in maintenance mode

High

Pro Disk Space

Monitors available disk space and warns when storage is running low

Critical

Infrastructure & Permissions ​

Custom Error Pages

Ensures custom error pages are configured to prevent framework fingerprinting

Low

Directory Write Permissions

Ensures critical Laravel directories (storage/, bootstrap/cache/) have proper write permissions

Critical

Queue & Database ​

Queue Timeout Configuration

Ensures queue timeout and retry_after values are properly configured

High

Up-to-Date Migrations

Ensures all database migrations are up to date and have been executed

High

Pro Dead Route

Detects routes pointing to non-existent controllers or methods

High

Pro Job Queue Configuration

Validates job queue configuration including blocking, retry policies, and failed job handling

High

Pro Data Retention Policy

Validates that proper data retention policies are in place to prevent unbounded data growth

Medium

Cache & Redis ​

Pro Cache Busting

Detects cache invalidation issues and stale cache problems

High

Pro Redis Eviction Policy

Ensures Redis eviction policy is configured appropriately

High

Pro Redis Shared Database

Detects when multiple services share the same Redis database

High

Pro Redis Status

Validates Redis connectivity and health

Critical

Horizon ​

Pro Horizon Reliability

Validates Horizon prefix configuration, provisioning plan, and runtime health

Critical

Application Servers & Deployment ​

Pro Octane Configuration

Validates Laravel Octane configuration for long-running server reliability including memory management and state isolation

Critical

Pro Vapor Configuration

Validates Laravel Vapor configuration for proper serverless deployment on AWS Lambda

High

Monitoring & Observability ​

Pro Health Check

Validates that the application has proper health check endpoints for monitoring and load balancer integration

Medium

Pro Alerting Configuration

Validates that proper alerting and notification mechanisms are configured for production issues

Medium

Extensions & Variables ​

Pro PCNTL Extension

Ensures PCNTL extension is available for queue workers and signal handling

Critical

Pro Global Variables

Detects usage of global variables which can cause unpredictable behavior

High

Static Analysis ​

PHPStan Static Analysis

Comprehensive static analysis detecting 16 categories of code reliability issues including dead code, undefined variables, invalid method calls, and more

Critical
PHPStan Detection Categories
  • Compile Errors - Syntax errors, colliding use imports, and methods, properties, constants, enum cases or parameters declared twice, all of which PHP refuses to load
  • Dead Code - Unreachable statements, unused variables, and code with no effect
  • Deprecated Code - Usage of deprecated methods, classes, and functions
  • Foreach Iterable Issues - Invalid foreach usage with non-iterable values
  • Invalid Function Calls - Calls to undefined or incorrectly parameterized functions
  • Invalid Imports - Invalid use statements for non-existent classes
  • Invalid Method Calls - Calls to undefined or incorrectly parameterized methods
  • Invalid Method Overrides - Incompatible method signature overrides
  • Invalid Offset Access - Invalid array offset access and type mismatches
  • Invalid Property Access - Access to undefined or inaccessible properties
  • Missing Model Relations - References to non-existent Eloquent relations
  • Missing Return Statements - Methods with missing return statements
  • Undefined Constants - References to undefined constants
  • Undefined Variables - References to undefined variables
  • Used Void Results - Using the result of a void function, method, closure, match or yield, which is always null
  • Other PHPStan Issues - PHPStan errors that no specific category claims

How They Work ​

Reliability analyzers use a combination of:

  1. Static Analysis (PHPStan): Detects code-level issues like undefined variables, invalid method calls, and type mismatches
  2. Configuration Validation: Checks Laravel configuration files, environment variables, and Composer dependencies
  3. Runtime Checks: Validates that services (cache, database) are accessible and functioning
  4. File System Analysis: Verifies file permissions, existence of required files, and directory structure

Running Reliability Analyzers ​

Run All Reliability Analyzers ​

bash
php artisan shield:analyze --category=reliability

Run Specific Analyzer ​

bash
php artisan shield:analyze --analyzer=database-status
php artisan shield:analyze --analyzer=up-to-date-migrations
php artisan shield:analyze --analyzer=cache-status

Run Multiple Analyzers ​

bash
php artisan shield:analyze --analyzer=composer-validation,queue-timeout-configuration,maintenance-mode-status

Best Practices ​

Development ​

  • Run reliability analyzers before committing code
  • Fix Critical and High severity issues immediately
  • Use static analysis (PHPStan) to catch issues early

CI/CD ​

  • Run reliability analyzers on every pull request
  • Fail builds on Critical severity issues
  • Monitor reliability metrics over time

Production ​

  • Schedule periodic reliability checks
  • Monitor for configuration drift
  • Validate environment variables on deployment

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