nsd7/laravel-activitylog-ui

Laravel Activity Log UI

A beautiful, drop-in Tailwind CSS dashboard for Spatie Laravel Activitylog. Browse, filter, diff, analyse and export the audit trail of your Laravel application — with analytics charts, a timeline, saved views, dark mode and a read-only JSON API. No build step, no Node, no npm.

Table of contents

• Why this package
• Features
• Requirements
• Quickstart
• Configuration
• Analytics dashboard
• Timeline view
• Saved views
• Exports
• Performance indexes
• Authorization & access control
• JSON API
• Localization
• Custom activity model / connection
• Testing
• Changelog
• License

Why this package

• Zero build step. Tailwind and Alpine.js are loaded at runtime — nothing to compile, no npm install.
• Drop-in. composer require, visit a URL, done. It reads your existing activity_log table.
• Broad Laravel support. Laravel 9, 10, 11 and 12 on PHP 8.0+ — not just the latest release.
• Multi-database. MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite and SQL Server, all tested. Search works everywhere (portable LIKE by default, optional MySQL fulltext).
• Safe by default. Authorization gate + optional allow-lists, noindex headers, and CSV exports hardened against spreadsheet formula injection.
• Fully tested. 80+ tests run against a Laravel 9→12 matrix on every push.

Features

• 📋 Activity list with event badges, subject & causer links, relative timestamps and pagination.
• 🔍 Inline change diff — expand any row to see the old/new value of every changed attribute.
• 📄 Detail page per activity: field diff, custom properties, raw JSON, batch link and the full history of the same record.
• 🧰 Rich filters — free-text search, model, subject ID, event, log name, causer, batch and date range, with quick date presets (Today, Last 7/30 days, This month). Active filters show as removable chips and persist across pages.
• 💾 Saved views — save a filter set and recall it in one click, scoped per user.
• 📊 Analytics dashboard — activity over time, breakdown by event and log name, and top causers/subjects, rendered with Chart.js and honouring your current filters.
• 🕒 Timeline view — a day-grouped vertical timeline as an alternative to the table.
• 📈 Statistics cards (total / created / updated / deleted) for the current filter, with optional live auto-refresh.
• ⬇️ Exports — CSV, JSON, Excel (XLSX) and PDF. Streamed, row-capped, and injection-safe.
• 🔐 Authorization gate, configurable route prefix/domain/middleware, plus optional user/role allow-lists.
• 🔌 Read-only JSON API (opt-in) over the same filters — consume the log from a SPA, dashboard or automated agent.
• 🌍 Localization — publishable language files.
• 🌓 Dark mode, responsive layout, accessible markup.

Requirements

• PHP ^8.0
• Laravel ^9.0, ^10.0, ^11.0 or ^12.0
• spatie/laravel-activitylog ^4.0, already logging activity
• Optional: maatwebsite/excel for Excel export, barryvdh/laravel-dompdf for PDF export

Quickstart

composer require nsd7/laravel-activitylog-ui

That's it — visit /admin/activity-log while logged in.

Make sure Spatie's activity_log table exists (see the Spatie installation guide). Optionally publish the config and run the extras:

# Publish the config file (optional)
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=activitylog-ui-config

# Publish the views to customise the UI (optional)
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=activitylog-ui-views

# Publish language files (optional)
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=activitylog-ui-lang

# Publish migrations for saved views + performance indexes (optional)
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=activitylog-ui-migrations
php artisan migrate

By default the dashboard is protected by the web and auth middleware. Define a gate (below) to restrict it further.

Configuration

After publishing, everything lives in config/activitylog-ui.php:

Analytics dashboard

Open the Analytics tab for charts computed from the currently filtered logs: activity over time, counts by event and by log name, and the top causers and subjects. The payload is cached per filter set (analytics.cache_ttl) and the date grouping is portable across MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite and SQL Server. Disable with features.analytics => false.

Timeline view

The Timeline tab renders the same filtered activities as a day-grouped vertical timeline — handy for scanning what happened and when. Disable with features.timeline => false.

Saved views

Save the current filter set a name and recall it with one click later. Views are scoped to the authenticated user. Run the published migration to create the activitylog_ui_saved_views table; until then the feature degrades gracefully and simply stays hidden.

Exports (CSV / JSON / Excel / PDF)

Export the currently filtered result in any configured format from the Export menu:

• CSV and JSON work out of the box and are streamed.
• Excel (XLSX) uses maatwebsite/excel when installed, and falls back to CSV when it isn't.
• PDF uses barryvdh/laravel-dompdf when installed, and falls back to JSON when it isn't.

All exports are capped at export.limit rows and string values are neutralised against CSV/formula injection.

Performance indexes

For large tables, publish and run the optional index migration (included in activitylog-ui-migrations). It adds indexes on event, created_at and a composite (log_name, created_at) on top of Spatie's defaults, which speeds up filtering and ordering. Building indexes can briefly lock the table, so run it in a maintenance window.

Authorization & access control

Access is layered:

1. Route middleware (web, auth by default).

2. Gate — if a gate named by gate is defined, it must pass:

   use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Gate;
   
   Gate::define('viewActivityLogUi', fn ($user) => $user->is_admin);
   

3. Allow-lists (optional) — set access.allowed_users (ids or emails) and/or access.allowed_roles (works with hasRole(), getRoleNames(), e.g. spatie/laravel-permission). Each list is only enforced when non-empty, so the defaults change nothing.

JSON API

Enable features.api => true for a read-only API under your prefix:

GET  {prefix}/api/activities           # paginated, accepts the same filters as the UI
GET  {prefix}/api/activities/{id}       # a single activity with its change diff

It honours the same authorization as the UI and is ideal for SPAs, dashboards and automated agents.

Localization

Publish the language files with --tag=activitylog-ui-lang and translate lang/vendor/activitylog-ui/{locale}/messages.php. The UI uses your app locale automatically.

Custom activity model / connection

The UI resolves the activity model through Spatie, so a custom model or database connection configured in config/activitylog.php (activity_model) is picked up automatically — including a custom table name.

Testing

composer install
composer test

The suite runs against a Laravel 9→12 / PHP 8.1→8.4 matrix in CI.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for what changed in each release.

License

The MIT License (MIT). See LICENSE.