Setup Laravel Reverb Server , Setup Env and Nginx Proxy
What is Laravel Reverb and when to use it
Laravel Reverb is Laravel’s first-party WebSocket server made for providing real-time broadcasting using the Pusher-compatible protocol. It lets you broadcast events from your server to connected clients without relying on third-party services. Reverb integrates with Laravel’s broadcasting stack so your existing events/listeners work with little change.
Use Reverb when you want lower latency, full control over your real-time stack, or to avoid third-party costs. It replaces setups that used Pusher, soketi, socket.io or custom websockets in many Laravel projects.
Pre-requisites for a production Reverb server
Before you start:
- A Linux server (Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 recommended).
- PHP 8.x supported by your Laravel version, Composer, and required PHP extensions.
- Open ports: standard web (80/443) and an internal port for Reverb (commonly 6001,8080 or configurable). Reverb itself listens on its own port; Nginx will proxy to it.
- nginx installed and working with SSL (Let's Encrypt recommended or others).
- systemd or supervisor to keep the Reverb process alive.
- These are standard production items — make sure your server includes them.
Install and publish broadcasting support (Laravel provides installer helper):
cd /var/www/html/laravel-app composer require laravel/reverb php artisan install:broadcasting
Publish config if needed and inspect config/broadcasting.php to ensure reverb is available and configured as a driver.
The Laravel docs confirms Reverb is included as a first-party broadcasting driver and recommend using the provided artisan/install flows
Setup Nginx Server Configuration with Reverb Proxy
Here we have used let's encrypt certbot ssl certificate for ssl
map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
default upgrade;
'' close;
}
server {
server_name website.com www.website.com;
root /var/www/html/laravel-app/public;
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
index index.html index.htm index.php;
charset utf-8;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
# Reverb WebSocket proxy - THIS IS THE FIX
location /app {
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header Scheme $scheme;
proxy_set_header SERVER_PORT $server_port;
proxy_set_header REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
proxy_pass http://0.0.0.0:8080;
}
location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
location = /robots.txt { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
error_page 404 /index.php;
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
deny all;
}
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/website.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/website.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}
server {
if ($host = www.website.com) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
if ($host = website.com) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
server_name website.com www.website.com;
listen 80;
return 404; # managed by Certbot
}Env file Reverb Configuration
## Reverb Start
REVERB_APP_ID=163456 #change according to your wish
REVERB_APP_KEY=i7kggvgihjxxxkdmster #change according to your wish
REVERB_APP_SECRET=xhm09feje245rcqp2g #change according to your wish
#where reverb server runs(used by artisan reverb:start)
REVERB_HOST="website.com"
REVERB_PORT=443
REVERB_SCHEME=https
REVERB_SERVER_SCHEME=http
VITE_REVERB_APP_KEY="${REVERB_APP_KEY}"
VITE_REVERB_APP_HOST="${REVERB_HOST}"
VITE_REVERB_APP_PORT="${REVERB_PORT}"
VITE_REVERB_APP_SCHEME=https
VITE_REVERB_APP_CLUSTER="${REVERB_APP_CLUSTER}"
## Reverb Config EndKeep Reverb Server Running using Supervisor
You need to keep reverb server running in background using supervisor. Supervisor installation process can be found here
Create a file inside /etc/supervisor/conf.d/laravel-reverb.conf and save below configuration
[program:laravel-reverb] process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d command=php /var/www/html/laravel-app/artisan reverb:start --port=8080 autostart=true autorestart=true stopasgroup=true killasgroup=true user=www-data numprocs=2 redirect_stderr=true stdout_logfile=/var/log/laravel-reverb.log
Now restart supervisor
You will connect to reverb server by below url.
wss://website.com/app/i7kggvgihjxxxkdmster?protocol=7&client=js&version=8.4.0&flash=false
Test reverb socket connection by third party tools such as wscat
Hope this will help you. You may share this with others.
