Eloquent Publishing Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Content Moderation & Scheduling: Enables publishing workflows for articles, blog posts, or marketing content where drafts must be scheduled or approved before public visibility.
• Build vs. Buy: Avoids reinventing publishing logic (e.g., custom timestamps, queries) while maintaining flexibility for customization.
• Roadmap: Supports phased rollouts (e.g., "planned" vs. "published" states) for gradual feature releases or A/B testing.
• Use Cases:
  • Editorial Systems: Manage drafts, scheduled posts, and live content in a single workflow.
  • E-Commerce: Publish product listings or promotions at specific times (e.g., Black Friday sales).
  • APIs: Filter endpoints to return only published/unpublished records (e.g., /posts?published=true).

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt if:

  • Your Laravel app requires time-based publishing (e.g., scheduled content, approval workflows).
  • You need consistent query methods (e.g., onlyPublished(), latestPlanned()) across multiple models.
  • Your team prefers traits over manual timestamp logic for DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) code.
  • You’re using Laravel 11+ and PHP 8.2+ (package’s supported versions).

• Look elsewhere if:

  • You need advanced publishing rules (e.g., multi-step approvals, conditional publishing).
  • Your app uses non-Eloquent data models (e.g., raw SQL, MongoDB).
  • You require real-time collaboration (e.g., Google Docs-style editing) where this package’s event system is insufficient.
  • Your team lacks Laravel/PHP expertise to customize the trait or migrations.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package streamlines content publishing with minimal dev effort. It adds a single trait to models, enabling scheduled releases, draft management, and filtered queries—reducing backend complexity while supporting features like time-sensitive campaigns or editorial workflows. MIT-licensed and actively maintained, it’s a low-risk way to standardize publishing logic across the app."

For Engineers: *"Replace manual published_at timestamps and custom queries with a battle-tested trait. Key benefits:

• Migration helpers: Auto-adds published_at columns with $table->publishes().
• Query shortcuts: Chain methods like Post::onlyPublished()->latestPublished().
• Events: Hook into published, unpublished, etc., for notifications or analytics.
• Customizable: Override column names or extend behavior via events. Requires Laravel 11+; drops legacy support. Example:

// Model
use Lemaur\Publishing\Database\Eloquent\Publishes;
class Post extends Model { use Publishes; }

// Migration
$table->publishes(); // Adds `published_at` column.
```*
*Tradeoff: Limited to Eloquent; not a full CMS, but solves 80% of publishing needs."*