Laravel Revisor Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Content Versioning & Workflow Automation: Enable draft/publish/revision workflows for Eloquent models (e.g., blog posts, legal documents, marketing pages) without custom logic. Reduces dev effort for versioning UX.
• Compliance & Auditability: Support regulatory needs (e.g., GDPR, healthcare) by tracking changes to sensitive data (e.g., user profiles, contracts) with immutable revision history.
• Collaborative Editing: Facilitate team-based content creation (e.g., editorial workflows) with draft states, approval flows, and rollback capabilities.
• Roadmap Acceleration: Replace ad-hoc versioning solutions (e.g., manual is_published flags + soft deletes) with a standardized, maintainable package.
• Build vs. Buy: Buy: Avoid reinventing versioning wheels for Laravel apps. Build: Only if needing deep customization (e.g., non-Eloquent models, bespoke UI).
• Use Cases:
  • CMS-like functionality for non-CMS apps.
  • Internal tools with content approval workflows (e.g., HR policies, product specs).
  • A/B testing by versioning content variants.

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt When:

  • Your app uses Laravel Eloquent and needs draft/publish/revision workflows.
  • You prioritize developer velocity over custom solutions (e.g., no time to build from scratch).
  • Your team uses FilamentPHP (optional add-on simplifies UI integration).
  • You need audit trails for critical data (e.g., legal, financial) without heavy ORM overhead.
  • Your content is moderated (e.g., requires approval before publishing).

• Look Elsewhere If:

  • You need non-Eloquent model support (e.g., MongoDB, raw SQL).
  • Your revision needs exceed soft-deletes + timestamps (e.g., complex diffing, binary data).
  • You require offline-first sync or distributed versioning (e.g., multi-region apps).
  • Your team lacks Laravel/PHP expertise (steep learning curve for customization).
  • You’re using a headless CMS (e.g., Strapi, Contentful) where versioning is native.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives:

"Laravel Revisor lets us ship content versioning—like a built-in ‘Save Draft’ and ‘Publish’ system—without custom dev work. This cuts time-to-market for features like blog posts, legal docs, or internal wikis by 80%, while adding compliance safeguards. For example, we could launch a customer-facing knowledge base with approval workflows in weeks, not months. The FilamentPHP add-on even gives us a polished UI out of the box. Upfront cost: minimal (MIT license); ROI: faster iterations and fewer bugs from ad-hoc versioning."

For Engineering:

*"This package standardizes how we handle drafts, publishing, and revisions across Eloquent models. Key benefits:

• No more spaghetti code: Replaces manual is_published flags + soft deletes with a battle-tested solution.
• FilamentPHP integration: If we’re using Filament, the UI for revisions is pre-built (saves frontend dev time).
• Lightweight: Adds ~500 lines of PHP (vs. thousands for a custom build). Docs are clear, and the MIT license avoids vendor lock-in.
• Extensible: Hooks for customizing revision logic (e.g., adding approval gates). Tradeoff: Limited to Eloquent, but that covers 90% of our use cases. For edge cases, we can wrap it or build thin adapters."*

For Design/Product:

*"This gives us superpowers for content workflows:

• Drafts: Users can save work in progress (e.g., marketing copy, support articles).
• Revisions: One-click rollback if a publish breaks something.
• Approvals: Flag content for review before going live (e.g., legal sign-off). Example: Our new ‘Company News’ section could use this to let PR draft posts, then have leadership approve before publishing—no more version confusion."*