- What is juststeveking/laravel-business-process used for?
- It is a Laravel-native package for defining business processes as explicit steps and transitions, then running them through a Laravel Pipeline in a structured and type-safe way. It fits multi-step, multi-actor workflows where transition rules are genuine business rules, such as orders, applications, subscriptions, claims, or onboarding records. It is not a replacement for durable distributed orchestration tools like Temporal or Camunda.
- How do I install juststeveking/laravel-business-process?
- Install it with Composer using composer require juststeveking/laravel-business-process, then register the service provider if your Laravel version does not auto-discover it and publish any provided configuration. The technical assessment describes installation as low-friction, but the real cost is modeling states, transitions, and guards and retrofitting existing status logic. Confirm the exact provider and config steps against the package README and composer.json.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does laravel-business-process support?
- The provided package overview does not list supported Laravel or PHP versions, so check the package composer.json and Packagist metadata before adopting. Because the package is at version 0.0.1 with no stated API-stability commitment, verify compatibility against your exact Laravel release. Treat framework support as an explicit evaluation item rather than an assumption.
- Does laravel-business-process persist transition history or audit logs?
- The assessment flags this as an open question: it is unclear whether state is only stored as a model column or whether transition history is persisted. Before adopting, verify whether the package records an auditable transition log, who triggered each transition, and when it happened. If audit history is a requirement, plan to add persistence yourself or wrap the package behind an application-owned layer.
- Can guards or transitions in laravel-business-process call services or dispatch jobs?
- The assessment raises whether guards are pure pass/fail checks or can mutate state and dispatch jobs, and whether events fire inside or outside the transaction boundary. Those behaviors matter because side effects inside guards can make workflows difficult to test and retry safely. Confirm the event and observer surface before putting core domain logic behind this package.
- How do I test a business process without booting Eloquent?
- The assessment explicitly asks whether a process can be unit-tested without the full Eloquent model, which is a key design question for fast and reliable tests. If processes depend tightly on model persistence, you may need to abstract the process behind an application-owned interface so tests can use fakes. Verify the package's testing surface and keep process classes small and deterministic.
- How does laravel-business-process handle concurrent transitions on the same record?
- The assessment lists concurrency as an unanswered question: row locks, optimistic concurrency, or nothing at all. For workflows on orders, subscriptions, or claims, two actors triggering transitions at once can produce invalid states unless you add locking or version checks. Plan to enforce concurrency control in your application layer and document the decision in an ADR.
- Does laravel-business-process support queued or long-running transitions that resume after failure?
- The materials suggest the package is oriented toward in-process workflows run through a Laravel Pipeline, not durable distributed orchestration. Queued transitions, resumption after failure, and long-running process support are not established and must be verified. If you need crash-safe, multi-service workflows, a dedicated engine such as Temporal, Camunda, or Step Functions is the honest choice.
- Is laravel-business-process production-ready given version 0.0.1?
- Version 0.0.1 was released in April 2023 with auto-generated release notes, no stated API-stability commitment, around 66 stars, zero dependents, and a single maintainer, which signals low external validation and likely dormant upstream. Composer semver permits breaking changes in every 0.x bump, so pin versions and wrap the package behind an application-owned adapter. Adoption is cheap to try but expensive to adopt well, so record the decision and exit path in an ADR.
- What are alternatives to laravel-business-process?
- For simple two- or three-state status fields, a plain PHP enum plus a guard method is cheaper, dependency-free, and easier to migrate later. For durable cross-service orchestration, use Temporal, Camunda, or AWS Step Functions instead of an in-process pipeline. For Laravel-only workflows, compare lightweight state-machine packages and consider an application-owned process layer if you want to avoid a pre-1.0 single-maintainer dependency.