Infolists Laravel Package

Getting Started

accelade/infolists is a read-only counterpart to form builders: you describe a data structure once, and the package renders it as a display-only "infolist" (detail/show views) instead of an editable form.

Minimal path from zero to first render:

1. Install and inspect before wiring anything up.

   composer require accelade/infolists
   

   The v1.0.0 release notes are only a Full Changelog link with no enumerated features or breaking changes, so treat the repository as the source of truth for this version. Read, in this order:

   • README.md — install command, required service provider registration (auto-discovery usually covers it), and the canonical example.
   • composer.json — require constraints. This tells you the supported Laravel/PHP floor and whether a frontend stack (Blade views vs. an Inertia/Vue runtime) is a hard dependency.
   • src/ top-level directories — the entry namespace and the layout/schema namespace are the two things you'll type most.
   • CHANGELOG.md — since the tag notes are empty, this is where any pre-1.0 API churn is documented.
   • config/ (if present) — whether anything is publishable at all.

2. Publish only what exists. If the package ships config or views:

   php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Accelade\\Infolists\\InfolistsServiceProvider"
   

   Verify the actual provider FQCN from composer.json's extra.laravel.providers rather than guessing. If nothing is publishable, skip this entirely — do not create a config file by hand.

3. First use case: a read-only detail page for one Eloquent model. This is the highest-value entry point because it exercises schema definition, state resolution, and rendering in one screen. Define the infolist next to the model (or in app/Infolists/), point it at a record, and render it from a controller or a Livewire component. Prefer starting with the simplest possible entry (a single text/attribute entry) and confirm state resolves before adding layout, sections, or relationship entries — otherwise a blank render gives you three suspects at once.

4. Confirm the render contract early. Establish whether the infolist is returned from a controller, embedded as a Blade component, or mounted into a Livewire component. This decision constrains everything downstream (authorization, lazy loading, partial reloads), so settle it on day one with a throwaway route.

Implementation Patterns

Treat the infolist class as the unit of reuse, not the view. Define one class per domain concept (UserInfolist, OrderInfolist) and reuse it across an admin detail page, a customer-facing "my account" panel, and an API-shaped export. This is the pattern that pays for itself fastest — infolists are cheap to compose and expensive to duplicate in Blade.

Compose with layout primitives, not markup. Sections, grids/columns, and tabs should live in the schema. If you find yourself writing <div class="grid ..."> around an infolist, the layout belongs in the schema instead; that keeps the visual contract in one place when design changes.

Keep entries declarative and push logic into closures. State resolution via closures is the standard escape hatch for computed values (full name from first/last, status derived from multiple columns, money formatted from an integer of cents). Prefer a named method on the infolist class over an inline closure once the expression exceeds one line — it's testable in isolation and won't drift between entries.

Use the infolist as the read side of a form. Where a resource has both an editable form and a read-only view, keep field naming aligned between the two so that labels, formatting, and relationship naming stay consistent. Divergence here is the most common source of "the edit page says X but the detail page says Y" bug reports.

Integration with authorization. Decide early whether visibility is expressed through the schema (entry-level visible()/conditional callbacks) or through policies on the underlying model. Mixing both is workable but you must be consistent: schema-level hiding is presentation, policy-level denial is security. Never rely on a hidden entry as an access control.

Testing pattern. Assert on the rendered output rather than on internal schema objects — mount the infolist against a factory-created record and assert the expected formatted values appear. Add one test per non-trivial closure entry, since closures are where state resolution actually breaks.

Extension points. If the built-in entry set doesn't cover a case, prefer composing existing entries over forking views. Custom entry types are the intended extension seam; published Blade views are the last resort because they couple you to the package's internal markup and will bite on the next minor release.

Gotchas and Tips

• State resolution vs. raw attributes. An entry keyed to a model attribute and one keyed to a closure look identical in the schema but behave differently when the record is a DTO, an array, or a paginated collection. When a value renders blank, first confirm what object the infolist is actually receiving, not what the entry is called.

• N+1 queries hide in relationship entries. A relationship entry that renders a count or a nested list will lazily load per row. Eager-load on the query that produces the records, and check with DB::listen or Telescope on the detail page — this is the single most common production regression when an infolist is added to an index-style screen.

• Date/time and money formatting are locale- and cast-sensitive. Entries that format dates inherit the app timezone and locale; an entry reading a cast datetime versus a raw string will format differently. Pin the format explicitly in the entry rather than relying on the default, and add a test that asserts the exact output string.

• Visibility is not authorization. Schema-level visible() callbacks are evaluated during render, not during any query. If a hidden section still caused a relationship to be loaded, the data was fetched regardless of who's looking. Gate the query itself.

• v1.0.0 is a stability signal, not a feature list. The release notes contain no changelog detail beyond a link. Before upgrading in a real project, read the commit range on GitHub and diff the public API surface (src/ entry and schema namespaces) rather than trusting the tag. If you were on a 0.x dev constraint, assume at least some renames and run the test suite on a branch first.

• Empty release notes mean empty migration guidance. There is no documented upgrade path here, so for this and any near-future release: pin the version in composer.json, and record in your own repo which infolist classes you've built so a future breaking change is a grep, not an audit.

• View/config publishing is a one-way door. Once you publish a package view to override it, you own it — future package updates won't reach it, and silent rendering differences after an upgrade usually trace back to a stale published view. Publish to debug, then remove the override once the upstream fix lands.

• Caching and partial reloads. If the infolist is rendered inside a Livewire component or a cached fragment, state resolvers re-run on each render. Closures that hit the database or the container will be re-executed; memoize expensive ones on the infolist instance rather than assuming a single evaluation per request.