Problem Details Bundle Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• API error-contract standardization. RFC 7807 (now obsoleted by RFC 9457, same application/problem+json media type) defines a common shape for machine-readable API errors: type, title, status, detail, instance, plus extension members. This package is a concrete artifact for the decision "do we adopt a standard error envelope, or invent our own?" The concept is the durable asset; the code is incidental.
• Public / partner API roadmap. If the roadmap includes exposing an API to third parties, SDK generation, or a developer portal, a predictable error schema is a product requirement, not an implementation detail. Standard errors reduce integration time for consumers and make error codes documentable and supportable.
• Support and DX cost. Every bespoke error shape is a support ticket waiting to happen. Consistent problem details let support scripts, client libraries, and dashboards key off type URIs and status uniformly, reducing per-integration hand-holding.
• Observability and incident communication. Problem-detail type values double as stable error taxonomy identifiers — useful for alerting rules, runbooks, and customer-facing status messaging.
• Build-vs-buy. The scoped work here is genuinely small (exception listener mapping exceptions → problem+json). That reframes the decision away from "adopt a package" toward "adopt a spec and write ~50–150 lines of middleware/listener."

Caveat that dominates everything else: this is a Symfony bundle, not a Laravel package. It cannot be dropped into a Laravel app without meaningful glue work. It also has 0 stars, 0 dependents, and a last release of April 2018 — it targets the PHP 7 / Symfony 3–4 era and is effectively unmaintained relative to modern Symfony and Laravel. Treat it as reference material, not a dependency.

When to Consider This Package

Adopt only under narrow conditions:

• The codebase is already a legacy Symfony 3.x/4.x application, on PHP 7.x, where the bundle installs and runs without modification — i.e., a sunk-cost environment where the migration to a maintained path is separately funded.
• You need a worked example of how to wire RFC 7807 output into a framework's exception-handling lifecycle, and you intend to port the pattern rather than install the code.

Look elsewhere (or build in-house) when:

• The stack is Laravel. There is no supported path here; write a small exception renderer or middleware that emits application/problem+json — this is a half-day task and gives you full control over the error taxonomy.
• You are on Symfony 5+/6+/7 or PHP 8+. No maintenance signal, no compatibility guarantee. Prefer a maintained alternative or a native listener.
• You need anything beyond the happy path — validation-error aggregation, i18n of title/detail, RFC 9457 conformance, tracing-ID extension members, or Retry-After on 429/503. The package is frozen in 2018 and will not have absorbed these.
• Supply-chain or security review is a gate. A zero-star, zero-dependent, six-year-stale dependency will not clear most procurement/security reviews, and the cost of shepherding that exception exceeds the cost of writing the code.

Recommendation: adopt the specification (RFC 9457 / application/problem+json) as a product standard; do not adopt this package as a dependency. Cite it in the design doc as prior art.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

To executives: Partner and customer integrations fail in inconsistent, undocumented ways today, which converts directly into support load and slower onboarding. There is an industry-standard error format (RFC 9457, formerly 7807) that makes API failures predictable and documentable. The recommendation is to adopt the standard as a cross-team API convention — a low-cost, mostly-process change — rather than license or depend on any specific third-party library. Expected benefit: fewer integration-support tickets, faster partner onboarding, and reusable error taxonomy for monitoring.

To engineering: This specific package is a 2018-era Symfony bundle with no maintenance signal and no dependents; it is not a candidate dependency, and it is not Laravel-compatible in any case. The pattern is worth adopting: an exception listener that maps domain and validation exceptions onto application/problem+json with a stable type URI registry, plus extension members for trace IDs. Estimated effort is small and contained to the HTTP layer, with clear test coverage via response-shape assertions. This also removes per-endpoint bespoke error serialization.

Decision requested: approve adoption of RFC 9457 as the API error standard and fund the small in-house implementation, with the bundle referenced as design prior art only.