Clearing Cache on Shared Hosting Servers in Laravel 5

In Laravel 5, you can efficiently clear your cache using the cache:clear Artisan command. However, when working on a shared hosting server, you may not have access to the CLI. This raises the question:

Can I clear the cache without using CLI on a shared hosting server that lacks control panel access?

Workaround for Clearing Views Cache

While the desired command is cache:clear, it also clears other cache types. If you specifically want to clear the views cache, you can use the optimize:clear command instead. Here's a workaround to call this command outside the CLI:

Route::get('/clear-cache', function() {
    $exitCode = Artisan::call('optimize:clear');
    // return what you want
});

For more information on calling Artisan commands outside of CLI, refer to the official documentation: http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/artisan#calling-commands-outside-of-cli

Understanding Cache Storage

The application cache in Laravel is typically stored in the storage/framework/cache directory. However, this may vary depending on your cache driver configuration in config/cache.php. To optimize performance, consider using a different driver like Redis or Memcached.