Couchbase Bundle Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Datastore selection, not package selection. This bundle is a thin Symfony DI/config wrapper around the Couchbase PHP SDK. Adopting it is really a decision to adopt Couchbase (document store, cache, session store, key-value lookups) — the bundle itself delivers almost no product capability.
• Build vs. buy on integration glue. The "buy" here is a few service definitions and connection wiring; the SDK does the actual work. For most teams the rational call is to depend on couchbase/couchbase-php-client directly and write a small in-house service provider — you gain control, upgrade path, and observability hooks.
• Framework fit and roadmap. Despite the "Laravel/PHP" framing, this targets Symfony's kernel and DI container. It answers a Symfony roadmap question, not a Laravel one. Laravel-first orgs should read it as a reference, not a dependency.
• Use cases worth evaluating Couchbase for: high-throughput key-value reads, session store, product catalog / user-profile documents, per-document TTL caching behind Redis/Memcached, and polyglot persistence alongside a relational core.
• Spike / prototype enablement. As a concrete example of wiring Couchbase into a Symfony container, it's cheap to read and informs your own abstraction design — a useful input to a build-vs-buy decision even if you never install it.

When to Consider This Package

Consider it when:

• You are on Symfony (not Laravel) and already operate Couchbase clusters with in-house operational expertise.
• You need a minimal bootstrap — cluster, bucket, connection config — and are comfortable pinning a commit or vendoring a fork.
• The workload is internal, prototype, or non-critical, with no uptime or vendor-support SLA attached.
• You are evaluating Couchbase and want a fast spike instead of writing container wiring from scratch.

Look elsewhere when:

• You are on Laravel — integration is not drop-in and the bundle's assumptions don't map to service providers.
• You need active maintenance: 4 stars, 0 dependents, and a description literally reading "just basic stuff in the first place" signal early-stage, single-maintainer, low bus factor.
• You need N1QL, full-text search, analytics, distributed transactions, retry/backoff, pooling, health checks, or tracing — all of that becomes your build.
• You are on a critical path or under security review — with MIT and one maintainer, you own the maintenance regardless.
• You want a vendor-supported path: the official PHP SDK plus a thin internal wrapper is the lower-risk option.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

Executives. This is a small, single-maintainer Symfony bundle for Couchbase with negligible adoption (4 stars, 0 dependents). It delivers no business capability by itself — Couchbase does. Recommendation: don't take it as a dependency; treat it as a reference implementation. If we pursue Couchbase, budget for the real costs — cluster operations, backups, monitoring, and a small in-house integration layer built on the official SDK. Acquisition cost is near zero; ownership cost is not.

Engineering. Architecturally it's a DI and configuration wrapper, not a feature library. In a Laravel codebase, plan a custom service provider around couchbase-php-client rather than pulling this in. If we do adopt it on a Symfony service, pin a commit, be prepared to fork, and add our own health checks, retries, connection pooling, and observability. Do not place it on a critical path without a named maintenance owner and a documented exit to the SDK.