- What is dragon-code/laravel-request-tracker used for?
- Laravel Request Tracker is a middleware-based package for logging incoming HTTP requests to your database using Eloquent. It is useful for auditing traffic, debugging issues, and understanding application usage without deploying a full APM agent. It stores request metadata such as method, URL, IP address, user agent, and response status.
- How do I install and configure Laravel Request Tracker?
- Install with composer require dragon-code/laravel-request-tracker, publish the config and migrations, run php artisan migrate, and register the middleware. Then review the published configuration for tracking options, fields, and filtering. The package is designed for minimal middleware-based setup with Eloquent persistence.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does Laravel Request Tracker support?
- The provided overview does not publish an explicit Laravel and PHP version matrix. The technical assessment treats Laravel 9+ and PHP 8.1+ as a potential fit but explicitly recommends verifying supported versions against Packagist and the repository composer.json. Check that file before adopting, especially if you run newer Laravel releases or PHP 8.3+.
- What data does Laravel Request Tracker store for each request?
- It persists request metadata via Eloquent, including method, URL, IP address, user agent, and response status, and it supports user attribution and response metadata. The overview describes configurable tracking options for fields and filtering, so the exact stored columns depend on your published config and migration. Review those files to confirm what is recorded in your application.
- Does Laravel Request Tracker capture headers or request bodies, and is there redaction?
- The provided overview does not confirm whether headers or request bodies are captured, and the technical assessment flags redaction as unverified and a high data-sensitivity risk. Request-tracking packages can accidentally persist authorization tokens, cookies, or PII if they log raw headers or payloads. Read the config and source before enabling it in production, and add allowlists or redaction where needed.
- Will Laravel Request Tracker slow down my Laravel application?
- The package adds middleware and a database write to the request lifecycle, and the assessment flags synchronous per-request persistence as a medium-high performance and write-amplification risk. Whether writes are synchronous or queued, and whether sampling is supported, needs verification in the source. Benchmark it in staging and consider a dedicated table or datastore for high-traffic applications.
- Does Laravel Request Tracker replace Sentry, New Relic, or Datadog?
- No. The assessment positions it as an application-level request journal that complements APM and tracing tools such as Sentry, New Relic, Datadog, or Tempo rather than replacing them. It does not provide spans, latency histograms, or a distributed trace graph. Use an APM for tracing, Laravel Telescope for local debugging, or a small custom middleware for basic request logging depending on your goal.
- Does Laravel Request Tracker propagate correlation across queues and outbound HTTP calls?
- The assessment warns that correlation likely stops at HTTP and that queue, event, and console propagation need testing against real call chains. The provided materials do not confirm end-to-end correlation across queued jobs or outbound HTTP client calls. If your architecture is queue-heavy, verify this in a spike before relying on the package for end-to-end tracing.
- Is Laravel Request Tracker production-ready, maintained, and Octane-safe?
- The assessment treats it as early-adopter instrumentation: low community validation, a single-maintainer risk, no production case studies, and a lifecycle risk around Laravel version lag and Octane or Swoole state leakage. MIT licensing provides a fork escape hatch, but you should verify release cadence, backward-compatibility policy, and maintainer responsiveness before relying on it. The blurb mentions Artisan commands, configurable retention, and a dashboard for reviewing and pruning request history, but confirm the prune workflow in the source.
- How do I test Laravel Request Tracker?
- Use a Laravel feature test that sends a request through the middleware stack and asserts a request record was created with the expected method, URL, status, IP, and user attribution. Refresh the database with RefreshDatabase and cover enabled, disabled, and filtered-request cases if those options are configurable. Also test that sensitive headers or bodies are not persisted if redaction is part of your configuration.