What is the Cache system in Laravel?
Why Interviewers Ask This
Foundational questions like this help interviewers calibrate the rest of the interview. A confident, accurate answer signals that you have solid Laravel basics — a prerequisite for any developer role.
Answer
Laravel provides a unified caching API supporting multiple backends. Configure in config/cache.php. Drivers: file, database, redis, memcached, array (in-memory, testing), dynamodb. Common operations: Cache::put("key", $value, now()->addMinutes(60)), Cache::get("key", "default"), Cache::has("key"), Cache::forget("key"), Cache::flush(). The Remember pattern: Cache::remember("users", 3600, fn() => User::all()) — retrieves from cache if exists, otherwise executes the closure and caches the result. Cache::rememberForever("key", $closure) caches indefinitely. Use cache tags with Redis/Memcached to group and invalidate related items. Caching is critical for improving performance of expensive database queries and API calls.
Common Mistake
Candidates often give textbook answers here. Interviewers are more impressed when you relate the concept to a specific problem you solved in a real Laravel project.