- What is genealabs/laravel-cashier-braintree used for?
- It brings Braintree payment handling to Laravel's Cashier API, giving you a fluent interface for subscriptions, one-off charges, refunds, and customer management. The package implements Cashier's billing contract — the Billable trait, subscriptions and subscription_items tables, a webhook controller, and builders such as newSubscription(), swap(), charge(), and refund() — on top of the Braintree PHP SDK. It is intended for a single-database Laravel monolith that has already committed to Braintree as its gateway.
- Is laravel-cashier-braintree still maintained?
- No. The repository is archived read-only, the last release was 4.0.0 on 9 October 2019, and it has 5 stars and 0 dependents. There is no active CVE triage, no patches for SDK security advisories, and no fixes for newer Laravel or PHP incompatibilities. Treat it as a reference implementation rather than a live dependency.
- How do I install laravel-cashier-braintree?
- Installation is ordinary Composer work: require the package, publish its config and migrations, and add the braintree_id, paypal_email, card_brand, card_last_four, and trial_ends_at columns to your billable table. Attach the Billable trait to your user model, then set BRAINTREE_ENVIRONMENT, MERCHANT_ID, PUBLIC_KEY, and PRIVATE_KEY in your environment. You will also need to exclude braintree/* from CSRF verification so the webhook endpoint can accept Braintree callbacks.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does this package support?
- The 4.0.0 release notes carry no Laravel or PHP support matrix, so the answer is not documented anywhere. The only reliable way to find out is to run the package's test suite against your real composer.json on the Laravel and PHP versions you actually target. Do not infer compatibility from the README or from the fact that the tests were green at release time.
- Does laravel-cashier-braintree work with the current Braintree PHP SDK?
- The release notes name a 4.x line of braintree/braintree_php, which is now several major versions behind. Because the repository is archived, nobody will bump that constraint or absorb breaking changes from the SDK upstream. Verify it against a currently supported braintree/braintree_php before committing, and assume the pin itself may be the blocker.
- How does laravel-cashier-braintree handle Braintree webhooks?
- It ships a webhook controller that receives Braintree notifications and syncs subscription state back into your database. What is not evidenced in the release notes is any test coverage for webhook signature verification, idempotency on retries, or payment-method update semantics. Those are the real failure surfaces in billing, so plan to write and own those tests yourself.
- Should I use this package in production?
- Only with your eyes open. The functional shape is right, but project health is poor: an archived repository, no security response path, and a stale Braintree SDK pin. The biggest risk is dependency-lock hazard — an abandoned billing library that blocks a Laravel or PHP security upgrade becomes an application-wide incident rather than a billing one. Put that on the risk register before you ship, not after.
- What does laravel-cashier-braintree not do?
- It is explicitly not a payment abstraction layer, so it does not decouple you from Braintree. It also does not cover tax-compliant invoicing, revenue recognition, metered or usage-based rating, dunning tooling, or a billing operations console. Scope your epic against that boundary so those workstreams get estimated separately.
- What are good alternatives to laravel-cashier-braintree?
- Laravel Cashier for Stripe or Paddle gives you the same fluent API on an actively maintained project. A thin first-party wrapper around the Braintree SDK is the other realistic path if Braintree is a hard product decision, for PayPal and Venmo reach, international coverage, or pricing. Either way, measure the exit cost up front, because migrating later means rewriting your billing state machine.
- Can I fork laravel-cashier-braintree and maintain it myself?
- You can, but budget for it explicitly: patches, Laravel major upgrades, Braintree SDK bumps, and a security response path all become yours. A funded 24-month maintenance estimate needs a named owner before you take that on. Note also that the 4.0.0 notes list no breaking changes, so the fork starts with an audit rather than a migration.