Laravel Model Cleanup Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Database Maintenance Automation: Reduces manual cleanup tasks for stale or obsolete records, improving operational efficiency.
• Cost Optimization: Automatically prunes unnecessary data to reduce storage costs, especially for SaaS or high-volume applications.
• Compliance & Retention Policies: Enables enforcement of data retention rules (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) by systematically purging outdated records.
• Legacy System Migration: Useful for phasing out deprecated features or old data during platform transitions.
• Build vs. Buy: Avoids reinventing a cleanup solution, leveraging a lightweight, open-source alternative (though now deprecated in favor of Laravel’s built-in prunable).
• Feature Roadmap: Supports long-term scalability by integrating cleanup logic directly into model definitions, reducing technical debt.

When to Consider This Package

• Adoption Criteria:

  • Your team is already using Laravel and needs a simple, declarative way to manage record cleanup.
  • You require time-based pruning (e.g., "delete records older than X days") without complex logic.
  • The package’s MIT license aligns with your open-source policy, and you’re okay with minimal maintenance overhead.
  • You’re not using Laravel 8+, where the built-in prunable trait is the recommended alternative.

• Look Elsewhere If:

  • You need active maintenance or advanced features (e.g., conditional cleanup, soft deletes, or event triggers).
  • Your cleanup logic requires custom SQL, batch processing, or async operations (consider laravel-scheduler + custom jobs).
  • You’re using Laravel 8+, where prunable is the official, maintained solution.
  • Compliance requires audit logs or dry-run capabilities (this package lacks those; evaluate alternatives like spatie/laravel-activitylog + custom logic).

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For Executives: "This package automates the cleanup of stale database records—like old logs, expired subscriptions, or temporary data—reducing storage costs and manual maintenance. It’s a lightweight, one-time setup that integrates seamlessly with Laravel, saving dev time and ensuring compliance with data retention policies. While not actively maintained, it’s a proven solution for teams already using Laravel 7 or earlier. For newer versions, we can migrate to Laravel’s built-in prunable trait with minimal effort."

For Engineering: *"The spatie/laravel-model-cleanup package lets us define cleanup rules directly in Eloquent models (e.g., olderThanDays(5)), then trigger purges via an Artisan command. It’s ideal for:

• Quick wins: No need to build a custom scheduler or cron job.
• Consistency: Enforces cleanup logic across all models in a standardized way.
• Legacy systems: Works well if we’re not yet on Laravel 8+. Tradeoff: It’s archived, so we’d need to monitor for edge cases or plan a migration to prunable later. For complex needs (e.g., conditional deletes), we’d pair it with custom logic or consider alternatives like laravel-scheduler."*

For Developers: *"This package lets you add a cleanUp() method to any model to define how old records should be deleted. For example:

public function cleanUp(CleanupConfig $config) {
    $config->olderThanDays(30); // Deletes records >30 days old
}

Then run php artisan clean:models to execute. It’s simple, but note:

• No soft deletes: Records are hard-deleted.
• No events: Can’t trigger actions before/after cleanup.
• Deprecated: Laravel 8+ has prunable, which is more feature-rich. Use case: Perfect for disposable data (e.g., drafts, cache, or temporary uploads). For critical data, validate the logic or extend it."*