Laravel Workflows

A lightweight, Laravel-native workflow engine for Eloquent models with explicit transitions, guard validation, events, and audit history.

Supports Laravel 10, 11, and 12.

Features

• Define explicit state transitions for Eloquent models.
• Enforce guard rules before transitions are applied.
• Emit transition lifecycle events for integrations and listeners.
• Keep audit history for transition activity.
• Configure behavior through publishable Laravel config.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require changole/laravel-workflows

Configuration

Publishing Config and Migrations

Publish the package configuration and migrations:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=workflow-config
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=workflow-migrations
php artisan migrate

Config Example

return [
    'state_field' => 'state',
    'auto_set_initial_state' => true,
    'audit' => [
        'enabled' => true,
    ],
];

Usage

Define a Workflow

<?php

namespace App\Workflows;

use App\Models\Post;
use Changole\Workflows\Core\WorkflowDefinition;
use Changole\Workflows\Core\WorkflowContext;

class PostWorkflow extends WorkflowDefinition
{
    public function model(): string
    {
        return Post::class;
    }

    public function initialState(): string
    {
        return 'draft';
    }

    public function transitions(): array
    {
        return [
            $this->transition('submit')->from('draft')->to('pending'),
            $this->transition('approve')
                ->from('pending')
                ->to('approved')
                ->guard(fn (WorkflowContext $ctx) => (bool) ($ctx->meta['can_approve'] ?? false), 'Not allowed'),
            $this->transition('reject')->from('pending')->to('rejected'),
        ];
    }
}

Attach to a Model

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Changole\Workflows\Traits\HasWorkflow;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    use HasWorkflow;

    protected string $workflow = \App\Workflows\PostWorkflow::class;
}

Apply Transitions

$post->workflow()->state();
$post->workflow()->can('submit');
$post->workflow()->apply('submit', auth()->user(), ['source' => 'api']);

Behavior

• Guard failures dispatch WorkflowBlocked and throw GuardDeniedException.
• Successful transitions dispatch WorkflowTransitioning then WorkflowTransitioned.
• Audit entries are written to workflow_transition_logs when workflow.audit.enabled = true.

Docker Test Workflow

make build
make install
make test

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.

Credits

• Emmanuel Changole
• All Contributors