- What is gdinko/econt used for in Laravel?
- It is a Laravel wrapper around the Econt courier API. It gives your PHP or Laravel application convenient access to shipping labels, delivery pricing, tracking, office lookup, and order fulfillment. It is a narrow-fit tool intended for apps that already ship with Econt, mainly in Bulgarian delivery workflows.
- How do I install gdinko/econt with Composer?
- Install it with Composer using composer require gdinko/econt inside a Laravel project. The package is Laravel-specific, so it will typically register a service provider and may expose configuration you publish with the vendor:publish command. After publishing, add your Econt credentials and environment settings before calling any endpoints.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does gdinko/econt support?
- The repository does not publish a clear compatibility matrix, so you should verify Laravel and PHP constraints yourself. Check the composer.json require block for the framework and PHP version ranges, then test against your target version. Because adoption is limited, confirm the package still resolves cleanly with your locked dependencies before committing.
- Does gdinko/econt cover label creation, pricing, and tracking?
- The package is described as covering shipping labels, delivery pricing, tracking, offices, and order fulfillment. Coverage depth for each feature may vary, so test the endpoints you actually need. Edge cases such as cash on delivery, parcel dimensions, cancellation, and returns should be validated against the Econt sandbox.
- Can I use gdinko/econt outside a Laravel application?
- It is built as a Laravel integration, so using it in plain PHP or another framework would require extra work. It likely depends on Laravel service container, configuration, and possibly a facade. For non-Laravel or polyglot architectures, you would need an adapter layer or a direct Econt API client instead.
- Is gdinko/econt actively maintained and safe for production?
- The project has low star counts and limited community validation, which signals a higher maintenance risk. The MIT license and small codebase make it easy to inspect, fork, or vendor if needed. Before production use, run a short spike against the Econt sandbox and be prepared to own the wrapper if the package is abandoned.
- How should I handle authentication, retries, and idempotency with Econt?
- Store Econt courier credentials in environment variables or a secrets manager and avoid logging them. Wrap calls behind your own gateway so you can add retries, timeouts, and idempotency keys for write operations like label creation. Duplicate shipment risk is real, so make label creation idempotent and log failures safely.
- What risks come with depending on gdinko/econt?
- The main risks are upstream Econt API changes, thin test coverage, and low maintenance activity. Courier-specific logic such as address validation, Cyrillic data handling, and label formats may be incomplete or brittle. If the package is abandoned, your team must take ownership of the wrapper and track Econt API changes yourself.
- How do I test gdinko/econt without creating real shipments?
- Start with read-only endpoints such as office lookup and price calculation in an Econt sandbox environment. Record API responses as fixtures so your tests do not depend on the live courier service. Only enable label creation and cancellation in a feature-flagged staging flow with idempotency keys and monitoring.
- Can I wrap gdinko/econt behind an internal shipping interface?
- Yes, and you should. Define an internal ShippingProvider or EcontGateway interface so controllers and domain services do not depend directly on the package. Keep the package in your infrastructure layer, map its responses into your own DTOs, and you can swap it for another carrier or an in-house client later with minimal disruption.