Query Filters Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Build vs. Buy: Accelerates development by eliminating custom query-filtering logic, reducing ~20-40 hours of engineering time for a scalable filtering system.
• Roadmap Alignment: Enables rapid iteration for admin dashboards, public APIs, or search-heavy features (e.g., SaaS multi-tenant filtering, e-commerce product grids).
• Feature Expansion: Supports future needs like:
  • Dynamic filtering (e.g., user-specific filters in a CRM).
  • API consistency (standardized query params across microservices).
  • Performance optimization (cached filter logic for high-traffic endpoints).
• Use Cases:
  • Admin panels (e.g., filter users by active, role, or created_at).
  • Public APIs (e.g., /products?category=electronics&price[gt]=100).
  • Search interfaces (e.g., filtering blog posts by tags or author).

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt if:
  • Your Laravel app requires reusable, maintainable query filtering (e.g., >3 endpoints with similar filtering logic).
  • You prioritize developer velocity over custom solutions (e.g., ad-hoc where clauses in controllers).
  • Your team lacks dedicated backend resources to build and test filtering logic from scratch.
  • You need consistent API responses (e.g., for mobile apps or third-party integrations).
• Look elsewhere if:
  • You’re using non-Eloquent data sources (e.g., raw SQL, MongoDB).
  • Your filtering logic is highly dynamic (e.g., runtime-generated filters via user input).
  • You require advanced features like full-text search (consider Scout or Algolia).
  • Your team prefers low-code/no-code tools (e.g., Retool for internal tools).

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package cuts backend dev time by 50% for filtering features—critical for our [admin dashboard/API roadmap]. It’s battle-tested (85 GitHub stars), MIT-licensed, and integrates seamlessly with Laravel. For example, instead of writing custom where clauses for every endpoint, we can standardize filtering with a single command (php artisan make:query-filter). This aligns with our goal to ship [X feature] 3 months ahead of schedule while reducing technical debt."

For Engineering: *"Query Filters gives us a DRY, scalable way to handle Eloquent filtering without reinventing the wheel. Key benefits:

• Generator CLI: Auto-creates filter classes (e.g., UserFilter) with typed query params.
• PSR-12 compliant: Clean, maintainable codebase.
• Octane-compatible: Works with Laravel’s high-performance server.
• Extensible: Supports custom validation, relationships, and even AI-driven filters later. Example: Replace this messy controller logic:

if ($request->has('active')) $query->where('active', $request->active);

With this:

$query = UserFilter::filter($request)->apply($query);

Let’s prototype this for [Y use case] and measure dev time saved."