laravel-api-microservices

Laravel 13 Internal Microservices — Boundaries, Communication & Event-Driven Architecture

When to Use

Use this skill when designing internal microservice architectures in Laravel 13. Covers service boundaries, database ownership, inter-service communication strategies (events, gRPC, REST), saga patterns for distributed transactions, service discovery, observability, and deployment strategies. Every microservice must own its domain and database — shared databases are forbidden.

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Service Boundaries

Domain Ownership

Each service owns exactly one domain. Never create "Everything Service."

✓ User Service        — users, profiles, authentication
✓ Billing Service     — payments, invoices, subscriptions
✓ Notification Service — email, SMS, push, in-app
✓ Search Service      — Elasticsearch, Meilisearch, Algolia
✓ Order Service       — orders, carts, checkout
✓ Product Service     — catalog, inventory, pricing

✗ Everything Service  — users, billing, orders, products all in one

Bounded Context Principles

// User Service owns:
// - User model and its database table
// - Authentication logic
// - Profile management
// - Password hashing

// User Service does NOT own:
// - Order history (owned by Order Service)
// - Payment methods (owned by Billing Service)
// - Notifications (owned by Notification Service)

Service Template Structure

services/
  user-service/
    app/
      Modules/
        User/
          Actions/
          DTOs/
          Models/
          Controllers/
          Events/
          Grpc/          # gRPC service implementations
          Listeners/
      database/
        migrations/
      routes/
        api.php
        grpc.php
    proto/               # Shared proto files
    tests/
    composer.json
    .rr.yaml             # RoadRunner config for gRPC
    Dockerfile

  billing-service/
    ...

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Database Ownership Rule

Forbidden: Direct Database Access Across Services

// FORBIDDEN — Billing Service querying User database directly
class InvoiceService
{
    public function generate(int $userId): void
    {
        // Direct query to another service's database
        $user = DB::connection('user_database')
            ->table('users')
            ->find($userId);

        // ...
    }
}

// FORBIDDEN — Shared database between services
// MariaDB/PostgreSQL database "main" accessed by both UserService and BillingService