Laravel Drafts Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Content Moderation Workflows: Enables draft/publish workflows for editorial teams (e.g., blogs, marketing sites) where content must be reviewed before going live.
• Multi-Environment Sync: Supports staging/production parity by maintaining revision history without duplicating databases.
• A/B Testing & Experimentation: Tracks iterations of content (e.g., marketing copy) without breaking live versions.
• Build vs. Buy: Avoids custom development for draft/revision systems, reducing technical debt and accelerating time-to-market.
• Compliance & Auditing: Retains revision history for regulatory requirements (e.g., financial disclosures, legal documents).
• Collaborative Editing: Allows multiple authors to work on drafts simultaneously (e.g., CMS platforms, internal wikis).

When to Consider This Package

• Avoid if:
  • Your use case requires fine-grained access control (e.g., role-based draft permissions) beyond the package’s publisher relation.
  • You need branch/merge-like workflows (e.g., Git-style collaboration) instead of linear revisions.
  • Your team lacks Laravel expertise; the package assumes familiarity with Eloquent and migrations.
  • You’re using non-relational databases (e.g., MongoDB) or need custom storage backends.
  • Performance is critical: Revisions are stored as separate rows, which may impact queries for high-traffic models.
• Consider alternatives if:
  • You need offline drafts (e.g., mobile apps syncing later).
  • Your revisions require binary diffs (e.g., images, PDFs) instead of full copies.
  • You’re using Laravel Nova or Forge: These may have built-in draft solutions.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives:

"This package lets us ship content faster and safer. Editorial teams can draft, review, and publish without breaking live sites—like a built-in version control for our database. It’s MIT-licensed, actively maintained, and used by [X] teams at [Y] companies. For example, our blog could reduce publishing errors by 30% while adding audit trails for compliance. The cost? Zero—it’s a drop-in Laravel package with no vendor lock-in."

Key Metrics to Track:

• Time saved on content approvals (e.g., "Reduced publishing delays by 40%").
• Error reduction in live content (e.g., "Zero broken pages post-launch").
• Developer velocity (e.g., "Cut custom draft-system dev time by 80%").

For Engineering:

*"This solves draft/revision needs with minimal boilerplate. Key benefits:

• Zero migrations: Uses Schema::drafts() to auto-add required columns.
• Relation support: Handles HasOne, HasMany, and BelongsToMany syncs during publish.
• Preview mode: Toggle live vs. draft views in a single line of code.
• Middleware: Protect draft routes with WithDraftsMiddleware.
• Laravel 12+ ready: Actively maintained with PHP 8.4+ support.

Trade-offs:

• Revisions are row-level copies (not diffs), so storage scales linearly.
• No soft-deletes for revisions by default (but can be extended).

Implementation Plan:

1. Add HasDrafts trait to models (e.g., Post, Page).
2. Run php artisan vendor:publish --tag=drafts-config to customize column names.
3. Use saveAsDraft()/updateAsDraft() in admin flows.
4. Add WithDraftsMiddleware to protected routes.

Example Workflow:

// Admin creates a draft
$post = Post::createDraft(['title' => 'New Feature']);

// Reviewer publishes it
$post->update(['is_published' => true]);

// Public sees live version
$posts = Post::published()->get(); // Only published records
```"

**Alternatives Considered**:
- **Custom solution**: Would take 2–3 weeks to build; this takes **<1 day**.
- **Third-party CMS**: Adds vendor dependency; this integrates natively with Laravel."