- What is alis/dico used for in a Laravel application?
- alis/dico is a Laravel package for building and managing dictionaries or glossaries, storing terms, definitions, and multilingual entries as governed reference data. It fits domain vocabularies such as catalogues, classifications, status codes, and regulatory code lists that would otherwise be hard-coded in enums, config arrays, or ad-hoc lookup tables. It is not intended as a general-purpose key/value store or a replacement for a full CMS taxonomy layer, so scope it to reference data only.
- How do I install alis/dico with Composer?
- Install it with composer require alis/dico, which pulls the package and its Laravel service provider through Composer's package discovery. The package ships models and migrations, so you will typically publish and run those migrations before seeding any terms. Because the repository has no published installation walkthrough in the excerpt, read the service provider and any bundled config file first to confirm what the package registers or publishes.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does alis/dico support?
- The declared constraints are not confirmed in the available information, so check the package's composer.json for its illuminate/support and php version requirements before committing. The project has a very small install base and no visible CI matrix, so treat the declared constraints as untested assumptions rather than verified compatibility. If you are on a recent Laravel major, budget time to run the package's migrations and a read/write smoke test on a throwaway database before adopting it.
- Does alis/dico support multilingual terms and definitions?
- The package blurb explicitly mentions storing multilingual entries alongside terms and definitions, which makes it suitable for glossaries that need translated labels. What is not documented is how locales are modelled, whether translations are separate rows or JSON columns, and whether fallback locales are supported. Verify the schema before designing around it, and keep locale handling behind your own accessor so you are not coupled to the package's translation structure.
- Is alis/dico production-ready and actively maintained?
- It is MIT licensed and technically low-friction to trial, but it has around three GitHub stars, zero dependents, and no visible release cadence, CI, or issue triage. That makes it an unvetted single-vendor component: the runtime risk is low but the supply-chain and longevity risk is high, so assume you may inherit maintenance. If you adopt it, pin the version, vendor the source in your review process, and require a read-through of the service provider, model layer, and any caching before it touches a production schema.
- How is alis/dico different from hard-coding lookup values in enums or config files?
- Language-level enums and config arrays are ideal for values that are truly static and only change with a deploy, while dico targets vocabularies that business users need to edit at runtime. Moving those values into tables gives you a single governed source, but it also introduces a schema you must migrate and backfill. A common approach is to keep immutable codes as enums and move only the business-editable subset into the dictionary.
- How do I publish alis/dico's migrations and configuration?
- The package most likely follows the standard Laravel pattern of publishable migrations and an optional config file, typically via php artisan vendor:publish with the package's provider tag. Confirm the exact tags by inspecting the service provider's boot method rather than guessing. Publish the migrations first, review the generated schema, and only then run php artisan migrate so you know exactly which tables the package owns.
- Does alis/dico cache dictionary lookups, and how do I clear the cache?
- Caching behaviour is not documented in the available material, and dictionary packages commonly add a cache layer with either automatic invalidation on write or a manual flush. Read the source for cache keys, TTLs, and any model observers before assuming lookups hit the database. If caching exists, wrap reads in your own repository so invalidation, and any future migration off the package, stays under your control.
- How should I test an application that uses alis/dico?
- Use RefreshDatabase or DatabaseTransactions in your test suite so the package's tables exist per test, and seed the terms each test depends on rather than relying on shared fixtures. Cover the write path and any cache invalidation explicitly, since those are the areas most likely to be untested upstream. If the package registers global scopes or facades, add a test that asserts reads return only the rows you expect, so hidden scoping does not leak into assertions.
- What are the alternatives to alis/dico for reference data in Laravel?
- For static vocabularies, native PHP enums backed by config files are simpler and require no dependency. For editable reference data, teams often build a small internal table with their own model and repository, or expose it as a shared internal API when multiple runtimes need it. Packages such as dedicated taxonomy or settings libraries exist, but for a low-traffic glossary the in-house table is usually less risk than an unvetted dependency.