Top 10 packages to get more Laravel Eloquent – Quick administration panel

At QuickAdminPanel, our goal is to save the developer time. Laravel Eloquent is a good example – his “magic” helps do things faster. But in addition to that, there are a lot of packages that can help even more. Let’s review the most popular.

Notice: Some packages have similar (almost identical) packages created by other developers, I added these links at the end of each package review, if necessary.

1. Audit Laravel: Save the model for modification of the models

URL:

Package which records the modifications of your eloquent model recordings as a “audits” allets, in a separate DB table.
The use is very simple. Everything you have to do in your model:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use OwenIt\Auditing\Contracts\Auditable;

class Article extends Model implements Auditable
{
    use \OwenIt\Auditing\Auditable;

    // ...
}

And then you can get all the “audits” by your model:

// Get first available Article
$article = Article::first();

// Get all associated Audits
$all = $article->audits;

// Get first Audit
$first = $article->audits()->first();

// Get last Audit
$last = $article->audits()->latest()->first();

// Get Audit by id
$audit = $article->audits()->find(4);

Official website: laravel-auditing.com
Article on Laravel News: Follow the Laravel model changes with Laravel audit

Similar package: Venturecraft / revisionable

2. Laravel-Soft Cascade: DELETE & RESTORE cascade when you use Laravel Softdeletes

URL:

Soft-Réletes is a major ready-to-use eloquent function, but it does not work with foreign keys and -> ONDELETE (‘Cascade’); migration. This package will solve this problem.

Use. In your model, use this:

use \Askedio\SoftCascade\Traits\SoftCascadeTrait;

protected $softCascade = ['profiles']; // names of your relations

After that, when you can delegate the software, all children’s entries will be automatically deleted smoothly. It also works with restore() function:

User::first()->delete();
User::withTrashed()->first()->restore();

More information: cascading softdeletes with Laravel 5

Similar package: Michaeldyrynda / Laravel-Cascade-Soft-Réletes

3. Spatie / Laravel-Schemess-Attributes: Add diagram attributes to the eloquent models

URL:

This package provides a line which, when applied to a model, allows you to store Arbritrary values ​​in a single JSON column.

The preparation of the model is a little more than a line of code, but always completely understandable, you must define an attribute, an accessory and a scope:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
use Spatie\SchemalessAttributes\SchemalessAttributes;

class TestModel extends Model
{
    // ...

    public $casts = [
        'extra_attributes' => 'array',
    ];

    public function getExtraAttributesAttribute(): SchemalessAttributes
    {
        return SchemalessAttributes::createForModel($this, 'extra_attributes');
    }

    public function scopeWithExtraAttributes(): Builder
    {
        return SchemalessAttributes::scopeWithSchemalessAttributes('extra_attributes');
    }

}

And then you can simply use this attribute as a property inside your model:

$yourModel->extra_attributes->name="value";
$yourModel->extra_attributes->name; // Returns 'value'

Or as a table:

// All existing schemaless attributes will be replaced
$yourModel->extra_attributes = ['name' => 'value'];
$yourModel->extra_attributes->all(); // Returns ['name' => 'value']

4. Awssat / Laravel-visits: visits to the track model

URL:

This package allows you to save visits to a page / model. He does it using Redis, so you need to configure this:

'laravel-visits' => [
    'host' => env('REDIS_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
    'password' => env('REDIS_PASSWORD', null),
    'port' => env('REDIS_PORT', 6379),
    'database' => 3, // anything from 1 to 15, except 0 (or what is set in default)
],

And then you can save visits with a line of code:

visits($post)->increment();

Counting messages is also easy:

visits($post)->count();

It also has a logic of limiting the journalization of the visit once by IP every 15 minutes, but it is also configurable.

The best part comes if you want to aggregate the data:

visits($post)->countries(); // top countries
visits($post)->refs(); // referers
visits('App\Post')->top(10); // Top 10 posts

Learn more about Laravel News: Count Models with the Laravel Visit package

5. Cybercog / Laravel-Love: React on eloquent models with tastes or aversions

URL:

If you have publications or comments that can be appreciated / hated, this package is for you.

The preparation of the model looks like this:

use Cog\Contracts\Love\Likeable\Models\Likeable as LikeableContract;
use Cog\Laravel\Love\Likeable\Models\Traits\Likeable;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Article extends Model implements LikeableContract
{
    use Likeable;
}

And then you can do things like:

$user->like($article);
$article->likeBy(); // current user
$article->likeBy($user->id);

$user->unlike($article);
$article->unlikeBy(); // current user
$article->unlikeBy($user->id);

$article->likesCount; // get likes for article

$article->collectLikers(); // Get collection of users who liked model

Learn more about Laravel News: Laravel Love: Likes and does not like for eloquent models

6. Spatie / Laravel-Tags: Add tags and tag behavior to your Laravel application

URL:

The only thing you need to do is add the Hastags Train to an eloquent model to make it taggable.

use Spatie\Tags\HasTags;

class NewsItem extends Model
{
    use HasTags;
    ...
}

And then do not hesitate to use it:

//create a model with some tags
$newsItem = NewsItem::create([
   'name' => 'testModel',
   'tags' => ['tag', 'tag2'], //tags will be created if they don't exist
]);

//attaching tags
$newsItem->attachTag('tag3');
$newsItem->attachTags(['tag4', 'tag5']);

//syncing tags
$newsItem->syncTags(['tag1', 'tag2']); // all other tags on this model will be detached

//retrieving models that have any of the given tags
NewsItem::withAnyTags(['tag1', 'tag2'])->get();

//retrieve models that have all of the given tags
NewsItem::withAllTags(['tag1', 'tag2'])->get();

More information – in the authors’ article: an opinion beacon package for Laravel applications

Similar package: RtConner / Laravel-Tagging

7. Spatie / Laravel-Sluggable: Generate slugs when saving eloquent models

URL:

This package automatically generates slugs from your title / name or any field you want. Here’s how you specify in the model:

use Spatie\Sluggable\HasSlug;
use Spatie\Sluggable\SlugOptions;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Article extends Model
{
    use HasSlug;
    
    /**
     * Get the options for generating the slug.
     */
    public function getSlugOptions() : SlugOptions
    {
        return SlugOptions::create()
            ->generateSlugsFrom('name')
            ->saveSlugsTo('slug');
    }
}

And then the magic occurs:

$model = new Article();
$model->name="activerecord is awesome";
$model->save();

echo $model->slug; // outputs "activerecord-is-awesome"

You can also specify different slugs for different languages, also configure what is going on when updating the recording, which separator to use (“-” or “_”) and more settings.

More information from authors: a PHP 7 / Laravel package to create slugs

Similar package: CVIEBROCK / Eloquent-Tousque

8. Spatie / Eloquent-Stratable: Triable behavior for eloquent models

URL:

This package provides a line that adds triable behavior to an eloquent model.
Here is how you specify the triable field of the model:

use Spatie\EloquentSortable\Sortable;
use Spatie\EloquentSortable\SortableTrait;

class Article extends Eloquent implements Sortable
{

    use SortableTrait;

    public $sortable = [
        'order_column_name' => 'order_column',
        'sort_when_creating' => true,
    ];
    
    ...
}

Then the column is automatically filled:

$article = new Article();
$article->save(); // order_column for this record will be set to 1

$article = new Article();
$article->save(); // order_column for this record will be set to 2

$article = new Article();
$article->save(); // order_column for this record will be set to 3

//the trait also provides the ordered query scope
$orderedRecords = Article::ordered()->get(); 

9. Dimsav / Laravel-Translable: a Laravel package for multilingual models

URL:

We have a separate article for 10 best Laravel packages for multi-year projects, and this is the obvious leader on the market.

You must create database migrations according to this scheme:

Schema::create('countries', function(Blueprint $table)
{
    $table->increments('id');
    $table->string('code');
    $table->timestamps();
});

Schema::create('country_translations', function(Blueprint $table)
{
    $table->increments('id');
    $table->integer('country_id')->unsigned();
    $table->string('name');
    $table->string('locale')->index();

    $table->unique(['country_id','locale']);
    $table->foreign('country_id')->references('id')->on('countries')->onDelete('cascade');
});

The next step is to configure your main model and also the related model for translations:

// models/Country.php
class Country extends Eloquent {
    
    use \Dimsav\Translatable\Translatable;
    
    public $translatedAttributes = ['name'];
    protected $fillable = ['code'];    
}

// models/CountryTranslation.php
class CountryTranslation extends Eloquent {

    public $timestamps = false;
    protected $fillable = ['name'];

}

Then you can fill and use translations, like this:

  $data = [
    'code' => 'gr',
    'en'  => ['name' => 'Greece'],
    'fr'  => ['name' => 'Grèce'],
  ];

  $greece = Country::create($data);
  
  echo $greece->translate('fr')->name; // Grèce

Similar package: space / laravel translatable

10. Space / Laravel-Medialibrary: associate files with eloquent models

I intentionally left this brilliant package the last on the list, because I suppose / I hope everyone knows. It has more than a million downloads overall. But for those who don’t know it …

Here’s how you configure your models to have media.

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Spatie\MediaLibrary\HasMedia\HasMedia;
use Spatie\MediaLibrary\HasMedia\HasMediaTrait;

class News extends Model implements HasMedia
{
    use HasMediaTrait;
   ...
}

And then you can attach all the multimedia files to the model:

$newsItem = News::find(1);
$newsItem
   ->addMedia($pathToFile)
   ->toMediaCollection();

Finally, here is how to recover these files:

$mediaItems = $newsItem->getMedia();

$publicUrl = $mediaItems[0]->getUrl();
$publicFullUrl = $mediaItems[0]->getFullUrl(); //url including domain

In the database, the records are stored in a media Table that uses polymorphic relationships.

So, that’s all, the 10 hand -selected packages, as well as their similar packages. Something I missed? Other packages to improve eloquent?