- What does the filament-whatsapp-widget package actually do?
- It is a Filament panel plugin that renders a floating, clickable WhatsApp contact button inside your admin panel interface. A visitor or user clicks it and lands directly in a WhatsApp conversation with the phone number you configure. It holds no domain logic, database tables, queues, or auth surface, so it sits purely at the presentation layer of your stack.
- How do I install filament-whatsapp-widget in a Laravel application?
- Run composer require jeffersongoncalves/filament-whatsapp-widget:^1.4 from your project root. The package pulls in jeffersongoncalves/laravel-whatsapp-widget v2 as a transitive dependency, so no separate install is needed. There are no migrations or new services to run, which keeps the footprint to a few minutes of work.
- How do I register the WhatsApp widget plugin in my Filament panel provider?
- Open the PanelProvider that defines your panel and add the plugin to the plugins array inside the panel() method. The exact class name and any fluent options are shown in the package README, so copy the registration snippet from there. Once registered, clear your config cache and the floating button should appear in the panel.
- How do I set my WhatsApp phone number and prefilled message?
- Publish the package configuration with php artisan vendor:publish and select the filament-whatsapp-widget provider tag. Then set the phone number in the published config file using international format without spaces, dashes, or a leading plus. The prefilled message that opens in the WhatsApp conversation is configured in the same file.
- Which Laravel, PHP, and Filament versions does this package support?
- The plugin targets the Filament v3 and v4 generation of panels, running on Laravel 10 through 12 and PHP 8.1 or newer. Because Filament releases move quickly, always check the constraint declared in the package composer.json and confirm it covers the exact panel version your application runs. Do not assume compatibility purely from the package version number.
- Why does Composer refuse to install version 1.4.0 alongside my existing packages?
- Version 1.4.0 changes the underlying jeffersongoncalves/laravel-whatsapp-widget constraint from ^1.0 to ^2.0. If your application or another plugin already pins that package to ^1.0, Composer will block the upgrade with a version resolution conflict. Run composer why jeffersongoncalves/laravel-whatsapp-widget before planning the upgrade so you know who owns the pin.
- Are there breaking changes when upgrading from 1.3.0 to 1.4.0?
- The only substantive change in 1.4.0 is the transitive major bump of laravel-whatsapp-widget plus six new translation locales, and the release notes do not document what changed in v2. The dangerous failure mode is silent: your published config from the v1 era may no longer match v2 keys, so the widget renders with an empty or stale number instead of throwing an exception. Diff or republish the config file after upgrading and verify the button output in a staging panel.
- Will this widget break my existing test suite?
- No, because the package ships no migrations, tables, or model factories, so it will not affect your test database schema. If you want coverage, the sensible test is a render assertion that your panel page contains the WhatsApp link with the expected number. The 1.4.0 release itself appears to have been validated mainly by additive translation files rather than new render tests.
- Is the widget customizable, and does it support multiple languages?
- You control the phone number and prefilled message through the published config, and visual tweaks generally come from your panel's own styling. Release 1.4.0 adds six new locales (az, hi, ru, uk, uz, zh_CN) on top of the existing translation set, contributed through a cross-plugin i18n effort. If a locale string is missing it simply falls back to your configured fallback locale, so the addition is low risk.
- Is filament-whatsapp-widget production ready, and when should I use something else?
- It is a low-risk leaf dependency with no infrastructure or runtime overhead, but it is a single-maintainer package with a small install base, so treat the bus factor as the structural concern rather than any specific release. Use it when you are already on Filament and only need a one-click contact shortcut. If you need chat history, agent routing, templates, or webhook handling, you want a proper WhatsApp Business API integration instead, and for a plain public site outside Filament a simple embed snippet is usually enough.