Getting Started

Reality check before you start. This package has zero stars, zero dependents, and a placeholder description ("This is my package acalendar"). That means there is no community signal to lean on: no issue history to learn from, no downstream projects proving it works against real Laravel versions, and no guarantee the README reflects the code. Treat the source, not the docs, as the specification, and budget a half-day for evaluation before you commit it to a project.

Evaluation sequence (do this in order):

git clone the repo and read composer.json first — the require block tells you the PHP and illuminate/* constraints, whether it pulls Carbon, and whether it depends on Livewire, Inertia, or a JS build step. If it pins an old Laravel major, stop here.
Read src/ top-down: the service provider (bindings and boot() behaviour), the config file, any Facade or contract interfaces, and the public entry-point class. That is your real API surface, regardless of what the README claims.
Check tests/ — presence and coverage of tests is the single best proxy for whether the author actually exercised the calendar logic (date math, ranges, timezones).
composer require aurorawebsoftware/acalendar in a throwaway Laravel skeleton, then php artisan vendor:publish --provider="AuroraWebSoftware\\ACalendar\\...ServiceProvider" and see exactly what lands in config/, database/migrations/, resources/views/, and public/.

Where to look first: the service provider. It tells you whether the package auto-registers routes, whether it merges a config file you can override, and whether it registers Blade components or a view namespace. Everything else follows from those three facts.

First use case: a read-only month grid showing existing dated records from your own Eloquent model (bookings, posts, invoices). Do not start with drag-and-drop editing. Rendering is the cheapest way to confirm the package's date-range and timezone handling matches your expectations, and it fails loudly if it doesn't.

{{-- shape to look for; verify names against src/ --}}
<x-acalendar::month :events="$bookings" :month="$month" />

If the package has no Blade component and only exposes a data/transformer class, that is a meaningful signal about its intended scope — see the next section.

Implementation Patterns

Because the API is undocumented, the practical pattern is adapter-first: never let the package's types leak into your controllers or models. Wrap it in one thin class of your own so that a swap-out (to spatie/laravel-google-calendar, a FullCalendar front end, or a hand-rolled grid) costs you one file.

Pattern A — Render-only feed. Your controller queries Eloquent, maps results into whatever array/collection/DTO shape the package's view layer expects, and passes it to the calendar view. Best fit if the package is presentation-oriented.

final class CalendarFeed
{
    public function forMonth(CarbonImmutable $month): array
    {
        return Booking::query()
            ->whereBetween('starts_at', [$month->startOfMonth(), $month->endOfMonth()])
            ->get()
            ->map(fn (Booking $b) => [
                'id'    => $b->id,
                'title' => $b->reference,
                'start' => $b->starts_at->toIso8601String(),
                'end'   => $b->ends_at?->toIso8601String(),
            ])
            ->all();
    }
}

This shape works with virtually any calendar package, so if you write it once you're portable.

Pattern B — Model contract. Some calendar packages define an interface (e.g. Calendarable) that your model implements, or ask you to register a morph-map so the calendar can resolve a record back to a URL. Look for an Interfaces/ or Contracts/ directory. If it exists, implement it on a dedicated adapter model rather than on Booking itself — you keep the package's required methods out of your domain object.

Pattern C — Route ownership. If the provider auto-registers routes for AJAX event fetching, do not let it own the URL space. Either disable them via config and register your own routes pointing at your own controller, or wrap them in auth/can: middleware. An unvetted package registering public endpoints is the highest-risk part of adopting it.

Integration tips that hold regardless of the API:

Put the calendar behind a feature flag or a CalendarService binding so you can A/B it against your own grid.
Add one feature test that hits the render endpoint and asserts a known booking appears in the HTML. That test is your regression net for package upgrades.
If the package renders JSON for a JS front end, log the payload during development — mismatched date formats are the number-one cause of "calendar is blank."
Freeze time in tests ($this->travelTo()) before asserting anything month-boundary related.

Gotchas and Tips

Supply-chain and maintenance risk is the headline. Zero dependents means nobody has hit the edge cases for you. Before shipping: pin an exact version (no ^), commit composer.lock, and consider vendoring the package into your repo (repositories + path or a fork under your org) so a deleted repo or a force-push can't break your build. Check composer outdated for its transitive deps — an abandoned Carbon or a stale nesbot/carbon pin is common in small packages.

Timezone and DST will bite. Set app.timezone explicitly and store timestamps in UTC. Calendars that bucket events by day are notorious for off-by-one errors at month edges and for all-day events drifting a day in negative-offset timezones. Test with a booking at 23:30 local on the last day of the month and one on a DST transition date.

Config cache ordering. Publish config, edit it, then php artisan config:cache. If you edit the config after caching (or after optimize), you'll debug a ghost for an hour. Same for view caches if it ships Blade views you've overridden.

Asset pipeline mismatch. Small packages often still ship laravel-mix output or a pre-built CDN bundle while your app is on Vite. Check whether views reference mix() or @vite. If it's mix(), you'll need the laravel-mix helper shim or you'll override the view to inject assets yourself — a five-minute fix, but only if you spot it before deploy.

N+1 on day cells. If the package iterates days and asks your side for events per day, you'll fire 30+ queries per render. Pre-load the whole month eagerly (the forMonth pattern above) or memoize the feed. Watch the query log, not the page load time.

Extension points to look for, in order of usefulness:

Publishable views — lets you restyle without forking.
A config-driven event model class name — lets you point it at your own model.
A view namespace (view('acalendar::month')) — lets you compose it inside your own layout instead of a full page.
Facade/container binding — lets you swap the implementation in a service provider for tests.

Debugging a blank or broken calendar: php artisan about to confirm the provider is registered; app()->bound(...) on suspected bindings; check storage/logs/laravel.log for swallowed exceptions in boot(); and dump the payload going into the view with dd() before blaming the package's rendering.

Don't let it own your schema. If the package ships migrations, publish them and edit them as your own, or write your own table entirely and feed the calendar from a query. Packages with low adoption change schemas without migration paths.

Bottom line: viable as a UI layer if the source reads cleanly and it ships tests; not viable as the source of truth for scheduling logic, recurrence, or reminders. Abstract it on day one and you keep the option to walk away cheaply.

Acalendar Laravel Package

Getting Started

Implementation Patterns

Gotchas and Tips