Legacy PHP Modernisation
Trade Supplier Order Desk: CodeIgniter Upgrade & Laravel Migration
A ten-year-old CodeIgniter order desk brought onto PHP 8, made fast again, and moved to Laravel one module at a time without a day of downtime.
Project Overview
The Challenge
The distributor’s entire trade counter ran on a CodeIgniter 2 application written in 2016 by a contractor who had long since moved on. It processed 600 orders a day, but the host was retiring PHP 5.6, several screens took over eight seconds to load, and nobody dared touch the code. A full rewrite had been quoted at nine months, which the business could not afford to wait for.
Our Solution
We mapped the application first — 214 controllers, 96 database tables, no tests — and then worked in stages. Stage one made it run on PHP 8.3 with CodeIgniter 3, fixing 340 incompatibilities on a copy and testing every screen against a snapshot of live data. Stage two fixed the slow pages: missing indexes, N+1 queries in the pricing engine and a report that loaded the whole order history to display one week. Stage three began the move to Laravel, module by module behind the same URLs, starting with the areas the business wanted to change most.
Key Features
What We Delivered
PHP 8 compatibility pass
Deprecated functions, removed extensions and error-handling changes fixed and tested screen by screen.
Pricing engine tests
The trade-discount logic covered by tests before anything was touched, so upgrades could not silently change prices.
Strangler migration to Laravel
New modules in Laravel share the database and session with the old application, so users see one system.
Performance fixes
Indexes, query rewrites and caching brought every screen under one second.
Outcome
Results and Impact
- Running on a supported PHP version three weeks before the host’s deadline.
- Slowest screens down from 8s to under half a second.
- Four modules rebuilt in Laravel so far, with no change to how staff work.
- Every change in version control with automated tests around the pricing engine.
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