Laravel Searchable Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Feature Development: Enables advanced search functionality across Eloquent models without requiring a dedicated search engine (e.g., Scout + Meilisearch). Ideal for projects where SQL-based search suffices and avoids vendor lock-in.
• Roadmap Prioritization: Justifies investing in internal search features over third-party solutions for teams prioritizing cost efficiency, data control, or compliance (e.g., GDPR).
• Build vs. Buy: Favors "build" for lightweight search needs (e.g., admin panels, internal tools) where Scout/Algolia would be overkill. Reduces dependency on external APIs.
• Use Cases:
  • Multi-column search: Replace manual whereLike chains with a single search() call.
  • Relation-aware search: Search nested attributes (e.g., author.name, tags.name) without manual joins.
  • Polymorphic search: Query morph relations (e.g., commentable:post.title) in one scope.
  • Filament integration: Add global/searchable columns to admin panels with minimal effort.
  • Cross-database search: Handle multi-tenant or sharded setups where relations span databases.

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt if:

  • Your search queries are SQL-based (no need for full-text indexing or fuzzy matching).
  • You’re using Laravel Scout but want fallback SQL search for edge cases (e.g., offline modes).
  • Your dataset is small-to-medium (<1M rows) or filtered heavily (e.g., by tenant_id).
  • You need relation-aware search (e.g., searching a user’s posts + their profile name).
  • Your team prefers avoiding external dependencies (e.g., Algolia, Meilisearch).
  • You’re using Filament and want seamless table/global search.

• Look elsewhere if:

  • You need high-performance search (e.g., autocomplete, typo tolerance) → Use Scout + Meilisearch/Typesense.
  • Your tables exceed millions of rows → SQL LIKE '%term%' becomes prohibitively slow.
  • You require advanced ranking/scoring (e.g., BM25) → Dedicated search engines excel here.
  • Your schema is highly dynamic (e.g., frequent column changes) → Scout’s index rebuilds may be preferable.
  • You’re locked into case-sensitive search or non-standard collations → Manual where clauses may be needed.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package lets us add powerful, SQL-based search to our Laravel apps without external costs or dependencies. It’s perfect for internal tools, admin panels, or lightweight public-facing search where speed isn’t critical. For example, we could replace manual whereLike queries across 5+ columns with a single Model::search('term') call—saving dev time and reducing technical debt. It also integrates natively with Filament, so our admin team can search across related data (e.g., posts + authors) without writing custom queries. Best of all, it’s a one-time dependency with no ongoing fees."

For Engineering: *"Laravel Searchable provides a trait-based solution for multi-column, relation-aware search in Eloquent. Key benefits:

• Unified API: Replace scattered whereLike calls with Model::search().
• Relation support: Search nested attributes (e.g., author.name, tags.name) via dot notation.
• Polymorphic/multi-db: Handles morph relations and cross-database joins automatically.
• Filament-ready: Adds global/searchable columns to tables with minimal setup.
• Scout-compatible: Works alongside Scout for hybrid search strategies. Tradeoff: Uses LIKE '%term%', so performance degrades with large datasets. Ideal for <1M rows or filtered queries. For bigger scales, we’d pair this with Scout + Meilisearch."*