Installation

php-opcua/laravel-opcua installs through Composer with Laravel's package auto-discovery. No service-provider registration, no facade alias to add manually — the composer.json extra.laravel block does both.

Requirements

Tested on every Laravel version listed; CI runs the test suite against all three on PHP 8.2 / 8.3 / 8.4 / 8.5.

Install

composer require php-opcua/laravel-opcua

Composer pulls in:

• php-opcua/opcua-client — the OPC UA stack
• php-opcua/opcua-session-manager — the optional daemon
• psr/log, psr/event-dispatcher, psr/simple-cache — the interfaces Laravel implements

Laravel auto-discovery wires up the service provider and the Opcua facade. No further changes to config/app.php or bootstrap/providers.php.

Publish the configuration

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=opcua-config

This copies config/opcua.php into your application. Edit it as needed; see Configuration · The config file for the full walkthrough.

You can skip the publish step if the defaults work for you — the package merges its config from inside the vendor directory.

Configure the endpoint

Edit .env and set at minimum the OPC UA endpoint URL:

OPCUA_ENDPOINT=opc.tcp://plc.local:4840

Everything else has sensible defaults:

See Environment variables for the full table.

Verify

In Tinker:

php artisan tinker

>>> use PhpOpcua\LaravelOpcua\Facades\Opcua;
>>> Opcua::isSessionManagerRunning();
=> false                                  // expected when daemon isn't started

>>> Opcua::read('i=2261')->getValue();    // server product name (well-known)
=> "open62541 OPC UA Server"               // or whichever server you targeted

If the read returns a value, the package is wired correctly and your .env matches a reachable server.

If the read raises an exception, see the error and consult:

• ServiceException with getStatusCode() → StatusCode::getName($code) === 'BadNodeIdUnknown' — the server is up but i=2261 isn't there. Rare; almost every server publishes this. (Note: BadNodeIdUnknown is the name of the status code, not an exception class — the exception raised is ServiceException.)
• ConnectionException — host unreachable, port wrong, server down. Fix the URL.
• UntrustedCertificateException — server is secured; see Security · Trust store.

Optional — start the session manager

For request-driven applications (Laravel HTTP handlers, queue workers), the session-manager daemon keeps OPC UA sessions alive across requests. Without it, every request opens a new session.

Start in the foreground for development:

php artisan opcua:session

Leave it running while you develop. In production, supervise with systemd or Laravel Sail / Octane / Horizon's process manager — see Session manager · Production supervisor.

Optional — install companion-spec types

If your servers implement OPC Foundation companion specs (Machinery, Robotics, BACnet, MachineTool, …), pull the pre-generated PHP types:

composer require php-opcua/opcua-client-nodeset

51 companion specs come pre-generated. Load specific ones via the OPC UA client builder — see Recipes · Using companion specs.

What now

Three readable next steps:

1. Quick start — Opcua::read() in a Laravel controller, three minutes.
2. How laravel-opcua fits — the mental model. Read this once; it pays off forever.
3. The config file — every knob, one page.