Laravel Deletable Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Soft Deletes + Business Logic Enforcement: Enable soft deletes while enforcing domain-specific deletion rules (e.g., "cannot delete if related orders exist" or "requires admin approval").
• Audit Compliance: Automatically log deletion attempts (successful/failed) for regulatory compliance (GDPR, SOX).
• User Experience: Replace generic "Are you sure?" prompts with context-aware messages (e.g., "This user has 5 active subscriptions").
• Roadmap Prioritization: Justify building a custom solution only if the package lacks critical features (e.g., multi-tenancy support or custom validation hooks).
• Cost Savings: Avoid reinventing deletion workflows for multiple Eloquent models (e.g., User, Product, Invoice).
• Scalability: Centralize deletion logic to prevent scattered if conditions across repositories/services.

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt if:

  • Your app uses Laravel Eloquent and needs consistent deletion validation across models.
  • You require soft deletes with customizable restrictions (e.g., foreign key checks, role-based permissions).
  • Your team lacks time to build a reusable deletion trait from scratch.
  • You need built-in logging of deletion attempts without extra setup.

• Look elsewhere if:

  • You need hard deletes only (use Laravel’s built-in forceDelete()).
  • Your deletion rules are highly dynamic (e.g., AI-driven approvals) and can’t be expressed via traits.
  • You’re on Laravel <11 or PHP <8.2 (package is future-focused).
  • You require multi-database support (e.g., PostgreSQL + MySQL with different soft-delete columns).
  • Your team prefers event-driven architectures (e.g., dispatching Deleting events via Laravel Events).

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package lets us enforce deletion rules consistently across our Laravel models—like blocking user deletions if they have active subscriptions—while reducing dev time by 30%. It’s MIT-licensed, actively maintained, and integrates seamlessly with our existing soft-delete workflows. For $0 cost, we gain audit trails and better UX without custom dev work."

For Engineers: "Laravel Deletable gives us a battle-tested trait to handle soft deletes with custom validation (e.g., cannotDeleteIfHasRelatedRecords()). It’s lightweight, supports Laravel 11–13, and plays well with policies/authorization. We’d save weeks of boilerplate and get built-in logging for compliance. Tradeoff: Limited to Eloquent; if we need more, we can extend it."

For Designers/UX: "This ensures users see clear, context-aware messages when they try to delete items (e.g., ‘This product is in 10 orders—archive instead?’). No more confusing ‘Are you sure?’ popups."