Successfully Upgraded a Laravel Application from v8 to v9

 Recently, I had the opportunity to work on a Laravel upgrade project, moving a production-ready application from Laravel 8 to Laravel 9.

Upgrading a major PHP framework version can be challenging — especially when stability and backward compatibility are critical. Here’s how I approached the task and ensured a smooth transition.

Project Overview

• Objective: Upgrade Laravel 8 app to Laravel 9

• Environment: Live client project with active users

• Scope: Core framework, third-party packages, and custom logic

Key Highlights of the Upgrade

• Migrated to Laravel 9, which now requires PHP 8.0+

• Refactored legacy code to support new standards

• Converted all migrations to anonymous classes (Laravel 9 best practice)

• Updated third-party packages for compatibility

• Ensured full regression testing before deployment

Testing & Quality Checks

• Used PHPUnit to run test cases

• Performed manual QA on all modules

• Created a staging environment for pre-deployment testing

• Took a full database and code backup before final push

Lessons Learned

• Always read Laravel's official upgrade guide before starting.

• Some older packages may break — research compatibility in advance.

• Anonymous migrations help prevent future migration class conflicts.

• Use version constraints wisely in composer.json to avoid dependency issues.

Laravel 9 Benefits We Gained

• Improved performance

• Cleaner syntax and codebase

• Better long-term support (LTS)

• Foundation to support Laravel 10 in future

I’m always excited to help teams modernize their tech stacks. If you're planning a similar upgrade or building a Laravel project from scratch, feel free to reach out.

Let’s build something better, faster, and more secure!