Larecipe Rtl Laravel Package

Getting Started

1. Confirm you actually need it. This is the official RTL stylesheet/enabler for LaRecipe. If your docs are LTR-only, you don't. If you ship Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, or Urdu docs, this is the shortest path to a mirrored layout — but see the archive warning below before committing.
2. Install LaRecipe first. This package is a satellite; it assumes binarytorch/larecipe is already installed, configured, and publishing docs. Get a stock LaRecipe docs site rendering before you add RTL.
3. Install the RTL package:

   composer require binarytorch/larecipe-rtl
   

   Check composer.json afterwards — the package was last tagged in April 2019 and pins/expects the LaRecipe 1.x era. On a fresh Laravel 9/10/11 app, expect a dependency-resolution fight or a silent no-op.
4. Register the provider if not auto-discovered. Older Laravel versions and this generation of packages don't always declare extra.laravel.providers. Look in config/app.php and add the provider manually if the RTL styles don't appear.
5. Publish and inspect. The service provider almost certainly publishes a CSS asset or overrides a LaRecipe view. Run:

   php artisan vendor:publish --provider="BinaryTorch\\LarecipeRtl\\LarecipeRtlServiceProvider"
   

   then diff the published files against LaRecipe's own resources/views and public/vendor/larecipe output to see exactly what got swapped.
6. First real use case: a docs site where the sidebar, TOC, breadcrumbs, and body text all read right-to-left for an Arabic-speaking audience, using the same Markdown source as your English docs.

Implementation Patterns

Copy the CSS, drop the package. Given the archive status and 0 dependents, the pragmatic pattern most teams adopt is to vendor the RTL stylesheet into resources/css/ of the host app and include it conditionally, rather than depending on a dead composer package. You keep the visual result and lose the abandoned dependency.

Locale-conditional loading. The common integration is to switch the RTL asset on when the active locale is in an RTL set:

// in a view composer or the docs layout
$isRtl = in_array(app()->getLocale(), ['ar', 'he', 'fa', 'ur']);

Then set <html dir="{{ $isRtl ? 'rtl' : 'ltr' }}"> and conditionally include the RTL CSS after LaRecipe's base stylesheet so it wins on specificity order.

Per-locale documentation trees. LaRecipe lets you point at different docs paths; pair that with a locale-aware route prefix (/ar/docs/..., /en/docs/...) and load the RTL stylesheet only under the RTL prefix. This keeps English and Arabic docs side by side without a build step.

Override, don't fork. If the package overrides Blade views, prefer publishing LaRecipe's views into resources/views/vendor/larecipe and editing them there. That centralises your customisation and makes it obvious what is LaRecipe and what is RTL hackery.

Pair with a locale middleware. A tiny SetLocale middleware reading a session or Accept-Language header is the usual companion. The RTL package has no opinion on routing; keep locale detection in your app, not in the package.

CI smoke test. Render one Arabic page in a feature test and assert dir="rtl" is present in the response. Cheap, and it catches asset-publish regressions on every Laravel upgrade.

Gotchas and Tips

• Archived since 2019. There will be no fixes for Laravel 6+ service-provider signatures, missing boot/register return types, or @vite-era asset handling. Treat it as reference material, not a maintained dependency.
• LaRecipe version drift. LaRecipe 2.x reorganised its UI and asset pipeline. An RTL patch written for 1.x will at best half-apply and at worst break the sidebar layout silently. Verify the CSS selectors actually match the current LaRecipe DOM before assuming it works.
• Asset caching masks changes. After publishing or editing RTL CSS:

  php artisan config:clear && php artisan view:clear && php artisan cache:clear
  

  and hard-refresh the browser. Stale public/vendor/larecipe files are the single most common "it doesn't work" cause.
• Use --force carefully. Re-publishing LaRecipe's assets will overwrite your RTL CSS if they share paths. Keep your RTL stylesheet at a distinct filename (larecipe-rtl.css) so publishes don't clobber it.
• Code blocks look wrong in RTL. LaRecipe renders highlighted code and inline code; without explicit direction: ltr; text-align: left on pre, code, fenced blocks mirror and become unreadable. Add that rule yourself — the 2019 package predates most of these refinements.
• Icons and chevrons don't flip. Sidebar expand arrows, breadcrumb separators, and search icons are typically font-glyph or SVG; they need transform: scaleX(-1) or a swapped icon set. Check the sidebar tree and TOC specifically.
• Debug with the DOM, not the source. Open devtools, confirm the RTL stylesheet is actually loaded (Network tab) and that its rules are applied (a dir="rtl" attribute on <html> is not enough if LaRecipe's own rules are more specific). If rules are greyed out, bump specificity or move your stylesheet later in the cascade.
• Extension points are thin. This package is essentially a stylesheet plus a provider. Anything beyond that — per-page direction, mixed LTR/RTL content, locale switcher UI — is yours to build in the host app. Budget for custom CSS rather than expecting the package to cover it.
• Migration tip. If you inherit a project using this, pull the published CSS into your own repo, remove the composer requirement, and add a regression test asserting dir="rtl". That's a 30-minute change that removes an archived dependency from your composer.lock.