Laravel Watchable

Enable users to watch various models in your application.

• Designed to work with Laravel Eloquent models
• Just add the trait to the model you would like to be watchable
• Watches are unique for one model and one user
• Events are fired on watched and unwatched methods
• Built to work with Laravel Notifications

Installation

Pull in the package using Composer

composer require jamesmills/watchable

Note: If you are using Laravel 5.5, the next step for provider are unnecessary. Laravel Watchable supports Laravel Package Discovery.

Include the service provider within app/config/app.php.

'providers' => [
    ...
    JamesMills\Watchable\WatchableServiceProvider::class,
],

Publish and run the database migrations

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="JamesMills\Watchable\WatchableServiceProvider" --tag="migrations"
php artisan migrate

Sample Usage and Boilerplate

I wrote a blog post to give you some boilerplate code that you can use in your application to wrap around the Laravel Watchable package.

https://jamesmills.co.uk/2017/10/22/laravel-watchable-package

How to use

Prepare your model to be watched

Simply add the watchable trait to your model

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use JamesMills\Watchable\Traits\Watchable;

class Book extends Model {
    use Watchable;
} 

Available methods

Watch a model

$book = Book::first();
$book->watch();  

Unwatch a model

$book = Book::first();
$book->unwatch(); 

Toggle the watching of a model

$book = Book::first();
$book->toggleWatch(); 

You can optionally send the $user_id if you don't want to use the built in auth()->user()->id functionality.

$book = Book::first();
$book->watch($user_id);
$book->unwatch($user_id); 
$book->toggleWatch($user_id); 

Find out if the current user is watching the model

@if ($book->isWatched())
    {{ You are watching this book }}
@else
    {{ You are NOT watching this book }}
@endif

Get a collection of the user who are watching a model

$book = Book::first();
$book->collectWatchers(); 

Use with Notifications

One of the main reasons I built this package was to scratch my own itch with an application I am building. I wanted to be able to send notifications to user who were watching a given model and I also wanted to allow users to be able to watch a number of different models.

public function pause(Order $order)
{
    $this->performAction('paused', $order);
    Notification::send($order->collectWatchers(), new OrderPaused($order));
}

License

This package is 100% free and open-source, under the MIT license. Use it however you want.

This package is Treeware. If you use it in production, then we ask that you buy the world a tree to thank us for our work. By contributing to the Treeware forest you’ll be creating employment for local families and restoring wildlife habitats.