- What is nsd7/laravel-activitylog-ui and what does it do?
- It is a Laravel package that adds a ready-made Blade dashboard for exploring activity logs written by spatie/laravel-activitylog. You get a searchable, filterable table of logged events plus a detail view showing old and new attribute diffs alongside stored properties. It is purely a presentation layer over Spatie's activity_log table, so it does not change how or what gets logged. Think of it as a disposable admin screen rather than a system of record.
- Does nsd7/laravel-activitylog-ui require spatie/laravel-activitylog?
- Yes. The UI reads the activity_log table that spatie/laravel-activitylog creates, so Spatie's package must be installed and its migrations run first. You also need models actually instrumented with the LogsActivity trait, otherwise the dashboard renders an empty shell. That instrumentation work is a separate scope from installing the UI and should be estimated on its own.
- How do I install laravel-activitylog-ui in a Laravel application?
- Install it with composer require nsd7/laravel-activitylog-ui and let Laravel package auto-discovery register the service provider. You can optionally publish the config and Blade views with vendor:publish to customise routes, middleware and markup. The dashboard then lives at the route configured in the published config file. There is no Node or npm build step because Tailwind assets ship precompiled.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does this package support?
- The package overview does not spell out an explicit support matrix, so check the composer.json constraint on the exact release tag you intend to install. Read the constraint rather than the docs site, because the documentation auto-deploys from main and can drift ahead of the tag. Pin your reading and your version to the release tag before quoting compatibility in a plan. If your app runs on an older Laravel or PHP line, verify the constraint admits it before committing.
- How do I secure the activity log dashboard routes?
- Routes, middleware and authorization are configurable, but that is configuration surface, not a shipped deny-by-default gate. Verify immediately after install whether the routes are live and whether the service provider protects them, then add your own auth and authorization middleware regardless. Treat the JSON API as a second, separate authorization boundary that may not inherit your Blade-oriented middleware assumptions. Assign a named owner for that gate before anything reaches production.
- Can I filter and search activity logs by user, event, model or date?
- Yes. The log table supports filtering by log name, event, subject, causer and date, with search and pagination built in for large audit trails. Clicking through to an activity shows the old and new attribute diff plus any custom properties stored with the entry. All queries run against Spatie's existing activity_log table, so indexing and row count still drive performance.
- Will the dashboard perform well with a large activity_log table?
- The UI adds pagination and search, but performance is ultimately bounded by your activity_log table size and index state. Spatie's default schema has limited indexing, and audit tables grow quickly on busy models. Measure current and projected row counts and check the indexes before rollout, and plan a retention or pruning policy alongside the dashboard. A slow audit table will make any UI on top of it feel slow.
- Does laravel-activitylog-ui include export or PDF features, and does it pull extra dependencies?
- PDF and spreadsheet export have been discussed in the documentation, so confirm whether dompdf and maatwebsite/excel are listed as suggest rather than require in composer.json. If they are hard requirements, a PDF engine gets installed into production whether you export or not. Check composer.lock after install to see exactly what entered the dependency graph. Keep exports behind the same authorization gate as the dashboard.
- Is laravel-activitylog-ui a good fit alongside Filament, Nova or Backpack?
- Usually not. If your admin surface is already Filament, Nova or Backpack, adding this package introduces a second admin paradigm, a second set of styles and another auth surface with little offsetting benefit. It fits best in Laravel monoliths and internal back-office apps that already render Blade and use Tailwind. API-only services and SPA-plus-API estates are also a poor fit, since the package is a server-rendered UI.
- Is laravel-activitylog-ui safe to depend on in production, and what are the alternatives?
- It has a small adoption footprint, a single maintainer and little external validation, so treat it as internal tooling with a fork-and-exit ramp rather than platform architecture. The good news is that Spatie's activity_log schema is the real contract, so you can replace or fork the UI without migrating data. Alternatives include building a simple resource in Filament or Nova, or querying the table directly. Verify the release metadata and tag on Packagist and GitHub before citing a version, and decide up front who holds the fork trigger.