Valueobjects Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Domain-Driven Design (DDD) Alignment: Enables clean modeling of business entities as immutable value objects (e.g., Money, Email, Percentage), reducing anemic domain models and improving code clarity.
• Type Safety & Validation: Shifts validation logic into object constructors, reducing runtime errors and improving developer experience (e.g., enforcing valid email formats or currency rules at instantiation).
• Reusable Business Logic: Encapsulates complex rules (e.g., tax calculations, discount validations) within value objects, making them testable and reusable across features.
• Roadmap Acceleration: Speeds up development of financial, e-commerce, or data-heavy products by providing pre-built value objects (e.g., Money, Duration, UUID).
• Build vs. Buy: Avoids reinventing immutable object patterns or validation libraries, reducing technical debt.
• Use Cases:
  • Financial Systems: Immutable Money objects with currency validation.
  • E-commerce: ProductSKU, ShippingAddress, or DiscountCode validation.
  • Data Pipelines: Immutable Timestamp or Metric objects for ETL processes.
  • API Contracts: Strongly typed request/response payloads (e.g., UserEmail, OrderTotal).

When to Consider This Package

• Adopt if:
  • Your team prioritizes DDD or clean architecture principles.
  • You need immutable, validated objects for critical business logic (e.g., payments, user data).
  • Your codebase suffers from anemic domain models or excessive validation boilerplate.
  • You’re building a PHP/Laravel product with complex domain rules (e.g., SaaS, fintech, marketplaces).
• Look Elsewhere if:
  • Your project is prototype/simple and doesn’t need strict typing or validation.
  • You’re using a framework (e.g., Symfony Forms, API Platform) that already handles validation immutability.
  • Your team lacks PHP/OOP expertise to leverage value objects effectively.
  • You need database persistence for these objects (this package is in-memory; pair with Eloquent or Doctrine for ORM needs).

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package lets us model core business concepts (like money, emails, or discounts) as self-validating, immutable objects—reducing bugs and speeding up feature delivery. For example, instead of passing raw strings for emails or floats for prices (which can break in production), we’d enforce correctness at code level. This aligns with our DDD goals and cuts tech debt for financial/e-commerce features. Low risk: it’s a lightweight, battle-tested library with minimal overhead."

For Engineers: *"This gives us a type-safe, immutable way to handle domain logic without boilerplate. Key wins:

• No more if (empty($email) || !filter_var($email, FILTER_VALID_EMAIL))—validation happens at instantiation.
• Reusable business rules: E.g., a Money object can enforce currency rules or tax calculations once, reused everywhere.
• Cleaner APIs: Clients interact with new Money(100, 'USD') instead of ['amount' => 100, 'currency' => 'USD'] with manual checks.
• Works with Laravel: Plays nicely with Eloquent (for persistence) or API resources (for responses). Tradeoff: Slight learning curve for DDD patterns, but pays off long-term. Let’s pilot it for [high-risk feature X] first."*