Laravel package for storing model versions

:warning: Disclaimer

This package is still under development and may change often.

Introduction

This package allows creating snapshots of models.

While a typical approach of adding a version column is often enough when there is a need of versioning models, this package stores snapshots in dedicated table. This provides better control over snapshotting process and keeps your tables clean.

My motivation while creating this package was to create configurable snapshots only when I need them, in contrast to generating new version with every update, while keeping connection to up-to-date original model.

Table of contents

• Installation
• Examples
• Usage
  • Basics
    • Creating snapshots
    • Reverting, branching and forking snapshots
    • Relations
  • Configuring
    • Snapshot Options
    • Versionist
  • Traits
  • Events
• Testing
• Changelog
• Licence

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require eribloo/laravel-model-snapshots

You can publish and run the migrations with:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="model-snapshots-migrations"
php artisan migrate

You can publish the config file with:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="model-snapshots-config"

This is the contents of the published config file:

return [

    /**
     * Snapshot class used. Must implement EriBloo\LaravelModelSnapshots\Contracts\Snapshot interface.
     */
    'snapshot_class' => EriBloo\LaravelModelSnapshots\Models\Snapshot::class,

    /**
     * Versionist class used. Must implement EriBloo\LaravelModelSnapshots\Contracts\Versionist interface.
     */
    'versionist_class' => EriBloo\LaravelModelSnapshots\Support\Versionists\IncrementingVersionist::class,

];

Usage

Basics

Creating snapshots

You can create snapshot by using a helper snapshot() function:

snapshot(Document::find(1))->commit();

This will snapshot model using default options defined in EriBloo\LaravelModelSnapshots\SnapshotOptions class:

• set version with Versionist class defined in config
• snapshot all attributes, excluding primary key, timestamps and hidden
• it won't create snapshot if other snapshot with the same stored attributes already exists - in such situation matching snapshot will be returned

Each snapshot stores an array of model attributes, options that it was created with, version and optional description.

Snapshots provide toModel(bool $fillExcludedAttributes = false) method, that returns model filled with snapshotted attributes. If optional fillExcludedAttributes option is true, returned model will use current model attributes as a base, otherwise missing attributes will be null.

Accordingly, if you retrieve collection of snapshots you can use its toModels(bool $fillExcludedAttributes = false) method to map all snapshots to corresponding classes.

Reverting, branching and forking snapshots

Snapshots have 3 helper methods to revert model, or to create a new one, from its snapshot:

• revert() - reverts original model to its snapshotted version, all snapshots created after the one used are deleted
• branch() - creates new model from snapshotted version and duplicates all snapshots up to, and including, the one used, associating them with new model
• fork() - creates new model from snapshotted version with no snapshots history

Attributes excluded from snapshotting will be filled with current model values.

Relations

In addition, package provides separate table to store snapshot relations with other models. There are morphToMany and morphToOne relations available that return either Snapshots or Models in HasSnapshotRelations trait.

Configuring

Snapshot options

Options can be defined by creating getSnapshotOptions() method on model:

public function getSnapshotOptions(): SnapshotOptions
{
    return SnapshotOptions::defaults();
}

Configurable options include:

• withVersionist(Versionist $versionist) - set Versionist used
• snapshotExcept(array $exclude) - exclude attributes from being stored
• snapshotHidden(bool $option = true) - store hidden attributes
• snapshotDuplicate(bool $option = true) - force snapshot even if the same already exists

Most can be later overridden while snapshotting using those methods:

• version(Closure $closure) - Closure that will receive current Versionist object, so you can access and call its methods if needed
• description(?string) - add optional short description
• setExcept(array $except), appendExcept(array $except), removeExcept(array $except) - modify excluded attributes list
• withHidden(), withoutHidden() - modify if hidden attributes should be snapshotted
• forceDuplicate(), noDuplicate() - if snapshot should be forced even if duplicate already exists

Versionist

Versionist is a class responsible for determining next snapshot version. There are 2 classes available by default:

• IncrementingVersionist - increments versions
• SemanticVersionist - keeps versions in major.minor format

If you would like to create your own versionist class it must implement EriBloo\LaravelModelSnapshots\Contracts\Versionist with methods:

public function getFirstVersion(): string;

public function getNextVersion(string $version): string;

Traits

While no trait is needed to make a snapshot, package provides 2 helper traits for retrieving snapshots:

• HasSnapshots - provides snapshots() relationship for retrieving stored snapshots as well as few getters:
  • getLatestSnapshot()
  • getSnapshotByVersion(string $version) - returns snapshot by specific version
  • getSnapshotByDate(DateTimeImmutable $date) - returns last snapshot created before date
• HasSnapshotRelations - provides relationship methods for creating connections with snapshots:
  • morphSnapshots(string $snapshotClass) - helper morphToMany
  • morphSnapshot(string $snapshotClass) - helper morphToOne
  • morphSnapshotAsModels(string $snapshotClass) - morphToMany that returns snapshots with toModels(false) applied
  • morphSnapshotAsModel(string $snapshotClass) - morphToOne that returns snapshot with toModel(false) applied

Events

There are a few events that get dispatched:

• SnapshotCommitted - dispatched when new snapshot is committed, but not when duplicate is found
• SnapshotReverted - dispatched when snapshot is reverted
• SnapshotBranched - dispatched when new snapshot branch is created
• SnapshotForked - dispatched when snapshot is forked

Testing

composer test

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.