Sandbox Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Draft/active consistency for many-to-many relationships: SandboxBelongsToMany::syncAcrossCopies() lets product teams keep relationship assignments aligned between active and draft model copies without forcing a draft to be opened or changing ownership.
• Safer editorial and approval workflows: Teams can apply an ID list, pivot attributes, or a payload factory after parent locks, then update timestamps, projections, and audit records in the same transaction using the returned affected copies.
• Build-vs-buy confidence: The package now covers cross-copy synchronization with 39 contract tests, reducing the need to build and maintain custom pivot-sync logic for Laravel sandbox/draft models.
• Lower adoption cost: No database migration is required in 1.1.0, making it easier to evaluate or roll out without a schema-change project.
• Clear product constraints: Unsupported filtered relations and identity overrides are explicitly rejected, which helps PMs scope use cases to supported relationship patterns rather than discovering limits late.

When to Consider This Package

Consider adoption when:

• The application already uses a Laravel sandbox/draft-copy pattern for models and needs BelongsToMany relationship changes to reach both active and draft copies.
• Product workflows require synchronized relationship state without opening a draft, changing its owner, or duplicating custom sync code.
• You need transactional handling of related timestamps, projections, or audit updates after cross-copy relationship changes.
• You rely on custom pivot behavior and need it preserved during synchronization.
• You want a tested package-level capability rather than bespoke synchronization logic.

Look elsewhere or defer adoption when:

• The application does not use draft/active model copies or does not need cross-copy many-to-many synchronization.
• The use case depends on filtered relationships or identity overrides that the release notes say are unsupported.
• The team needs a general-purpose relationship synchronization tool outside this package’s Laravel sandbox/draft model pattern.
• There is no need for transactional audit/projection updates or custom pivot behavior, in which case simpler native Laravel relationship handling may be sufficient.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives: This release adds a focused, tested capability for keeping active and draft relationship assignments consistent in Laravel applications. It reduces custom engineering risk for editorial/approval workflows and requires no database migration, so it can be adopted with limited operational disruption.

For engineering: Version 1.1.0 introduces SandboxBelongsToMany::syncAcrossCopies(), which accepts ID lists, pivot attribute maps, or payload factories evaluated after parent locks. It applies removal deltas across copies while preserving unrelated assignments, returns affected parent copies for same-transaction timestamp/projection/audit updates, preserves custom pivot behavior, compares raw database keys while retaining global-scope filters, and rejects unsupported filtered relations and identity overrides. The release includes 39 contract tests and retains prior generated-column and Oracle discovery improvements.