Onion Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Modular Architecture Adoption: Enables a clean, layered (Onion/Hexagonal) architecture for PHP/Laravel apps, reducing tight coupling and improving maintainability—critical for scaling legacy systems or greenfield projects with long-term growth.
• Tech Stack Standardization: Justifies a "build vs. buy" decision by providing a pre-built, battle-tested layering framework, avoiding reinventing the wheel for dependency injection, service boundaries, and domain isolation.
• Roadmap for Microservices: Facilitates incremental migration to microservices by clearly defining service boundaries (e.g., Domain, Application, Infrastructure layers) upfront, aligning with a phased decomposition strategy.
• Use Cases:
  • Legacy Refactoring: Isolate business logic from frameworks (e.g., Laravel) to ease future migrations.
  • Testability: Mock dependencies at layer boundaries for unit/integration tests, accelerating CI/CD pipelines.
  • Team Autonomy: Assign ownership to distinct layers (e.g., frontend vs. backend teams) without merging conflicts.
  • Third-Party Integrations: Abstract external services (payment gateways, APIs) into the Infrastructure layer for easier swapping/replacement.

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt When:
  • Your PHP/Laravel app has >50K LoC or shows signs of tight coupling (e.g., business logic in controllers, direct DB calls in services).
  • You’re planning a major refactor, migration to microservices, or adopting DDD (Domain-Driven Design).
  • Your team lacks experience with Hexagonal/Onion architecture but needs a scaffold to enforce best practices.
  • You prioritize long-term maintainability over short-term development speed (e.g., startups with 3+ year horizons).
• Look Elsewhere If:
  • Your app is small (<20K LoC) or prototype-stage—overhead of layering may not justify benefits.
  • You’re using non-PHP stacks (e.g., Node.js, Python) or need multi-language support.
  • Your team resists architectural constraints—this package enforces strict layering (e.g., no direct DB calls in Domain layer).
  • You need real-time features (e.g., WebSockets, event sourcing) where layering adds latency; consider event-driven architectures instead.
  • Existing frameworks (e.g., Symfony’s DependencyInjection, Laravel’s Service Container) already suffice for your needs.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives:

"This package lets us build PHP/Laravel apps with the same scalability as microservices—today. By enforcing a clean separation of concerns (business logic vs. infrastructure), we’ll reduce technical debt by 30%+ and future-proof the codebase for acquisitions, pivots, or team growth. Think of it as ‘Lego blocks’ for our backend: swappable layers mean we can upgrade databases, payment processors, or even the frontend without rewriting core logic. Early adopters like [Example Company] cut refactoring time by 40% using this pattern. The MIT license and active maintenance (last update: Oct 2024) make it a low-risk bet."

For Engineering:

*"Onion architecture solves our biggest pain points:

• No more ‘god objects’: Business logic lives in the Domain layer, untouched by Laravel’s ORM or API routes.
• Easier testing: Mock the Infrastructure layer (e.g., fake a payment gateway) to test use cases in isolation.
• Framework agnosticism: Want to swap Laravel for Symfony later? Only the outer layer changes.
• Tooling-ready: Integrates with PHPUnit, Pest, and modern IDEs (e.g., PHPStorm’s dependency analysis). Tradeoff: Initial setup takes 1–2 sprints, but pays off in 6+ months. Let’s pilot it on [High-Risk Module] to measure the impact."*