Filament v3: App framework for the TALL stack

[danharrin]

Ever since Filament launched I've heard of users using our "admin panel" (filament/filament) product for building their entire app. They enjoy the admin panel CRUD features and prebuilt authentication and layout. Their users have access to the dashboard, and this significantly cuts development time. We've also had feature requests to take this further and provide billing integrations for SaaS apps.

Until today, I haven't discouraged this behaviour and said that it was a possible use case for our admin panel. However, I did recommend that users build their apps outside the admin panel and use the form builder, table builder and notifications packages. There are a few reasons for this:

• The admin panel has a page layout and design which is customisable but not completely flexible. I believe that brands should have personality shine through within their app, and the admin panel doesn't always allow this to the fullest extent.
• Out of the box, it's only possible to have one set of resources / pages / dashboard widgets that all users have access to. Granted, you can use authorisation to control access of these to different user groups, but when two different groups have completely different resources then there is no separation between these on the code-level.
• Many SaaS apps have the concepts of "team multitenancy" and billing. This allows multiple groups of users to use the admin panel, switch groups, and collaborate on their own database records. This wasn't something that was easily built into Filament.
• You wouldn't be able to easily have a separate admin section to the main app anymore.

In truth, "admin panel" is purely a marketing term for that package. There are no references of the word "admin" within the codebase of Filament. It's just Filament, it's own thing.

Today, I was discussing this topic further with the rest of the Filament team. It actually started with Dennis:

Zep prompted discussion on why I thought this way, and I kinda started to come around to the idea of using the "admin panel" for full apps. It makes sense - so many apps are CRUD-orientated, and many developers want to save time by not needing to build a layout and page navigation and everything.

But even if I thought this way, I still had many concerns (outlined above) as to why I would not use the "admin panel" for such a project. So I thought about it some more and had a discussion. We also made a Twitter poll, as if anyone could convince me this was a good idea, it would be actual users.

The majority of users we asked on Twitter said that they use Filament to build apps, not just admin panels. I didn't really expect that result, and it kinda solidified that I was thinking in the wrong way about this topic.

I jumped on a call with some of the Filament team and we talked about possibilities some more. Here's what we discussed.

Proposal

Filament will be a full framework built on the TALL stack for building apps. Out of the box, it acts like an admin panel, so there's nothing to worry about if you only need that. But for those who want to, they can transform it into a multi-context, multi-tenant, billable SaaS product, with a separate admin area.

Ecosystem overview for v3

The following UI components will be installable outside of filament/filament and usable in any TALL stack app:

• filament/forms - form builder
• filament/tables - table builder
• filament/notifications - notifications manager
• filament/widgets - dashboard widgets like charts and stats cards [NEW]
• filament/actions - easy modals and slide-overs with forms [NEW]

filament/filament will be advertised as an "app framework" or "app builder" or "admin panel and app framework", and uses all of the individual UI components.

Multi-context

Succeeding the popular multi-context plugin (by @coleshirley) for the admin panel, Filament will be able to split itself into different "contexts". Each "context" is definable in a service provider. Each has its own path (/admin, /app, /console etc.), and has it's own CRUD resources, pages, dashboard widgets, etc. You can decide which Laravel authentication guards handle each context, or if the same auth guard should authorize different users to different contexts.

Teams

You may allow a context to handle "teams". Teams are groups of users who collaborate together on the same database records. It's a form of multi-tenancy, but also involves UI to switch between teams or create a new team. Contexts don't handle teams by default, but you can configure that behaviour in the service provider.

Billing

Billing is an important part of SaaS. Filament will ship with adapters that can be used to start subscriptions, managing payments, and more. It will also integrate with teams. We will release a first-party Laravel Spark adapter.

And of course you could create your own adapters to connect to a custom billing system.

Theming

We will dramatically improve the ability to customise the appearance of Filament. We will sell themes for Filament. These can change how your Filament contexts look. You can make your own themes if you wish. We might even offer exclusive themes that can only be purchased once, and basically sell you the complete brand materials.

Notes

Existing admin panel users will not have their experience affected at all.

No, we are not recommending that everyone uses Filament to build every app in existence, just the ones that make sense.

All of my previous concerns are invalid if we implement these features.

[coleshirley]

Love it! I'm proud of my multi-context package but it is very 'hacky' to add context functionality as a plugin. Super excited for all the v3 features

[danharrin]

Thank you for your service - the community loves it

[rich06]

@coleshirley - your package sound awesome :) is it still supported?

[Wulfheart]

https://github.com/artificertech/filament-multi-context

[rich06]

Thanks - I only asked as there's 4 open issues dating back to Jan with no response.

[AyoobMH]

This is just awesome, truly appreciate your time and efforts, would love to contribute to Filament in the near future.

[mahfoudfx]

I don't know if this were the initial vision or it's new, but what about to include an API generator?!

[zepfietje]

Thanks for the idea! This has been suggested before, but we don't see this fit in the Filament core. Would definitely be a good plugin though!

[mahfoudfx]

I was wondering if it could be a separate component, something like filament/apis, if a plugin, it should be officially maintained/supervised to fit the core sources.

[zepfietje]

I think we'd rather see this as a community plugin for now.

[Uolsen]

I like that idea. It will be complete package if API will be there too 🤔

[amaurycid]

I've tried many admin-panel solutions out there... Filament so far is unmatched. The community thanks you for your efforts and concerns bringing this excellent solution.

[romaldyminaya]

@danharrin I agree with all of your proposals. Thanks 🙏🏼

[brianakidd]

This is great. The TALL stack, and especially Filament, are the best things going on in the Laravel community IMO. Glad to see maintainers generate income from their projects - its great for sustainability and good for all of us in the long run. Thanks

[brianakidd]

You won't need Jetstream anymore but I doubt you will need to start a new project

Do you foresee having a "team" model where a user can belong to many teams as in jetstream or some other way for managing tenants?

EDIT: Sorry I went back and reread your post and it does seem to indicate a user can belong to many teams. Thanks

[danharrin]

Yeah, and thats already built and ready for release

[bfiessinger]

will it be possible to use an alternate team model?

[danharrin]

Absolutely. You can use any tenant model you wish. Even the User.

[bfiessinger]

@danharrin can't wait to upgrade to filament v3. Love all the work done so far! ❤️

[MACscr]

I dont see a downside to any of the proposal. Sounds great.

[ralphjsmit]

Awesome, love the new direction! I think that the "themes" stuff is really good. Thanks for writing this up 🙌❤️

[lukas-frey]

This is briliant. Writing filament apps is such an enjoyable experience, can't wait for this!

[martin-ro]

Me every time working with Filament: "🤔 Wonder if I can use this in the front-end"

[zepfietje]

We've heard you thinking. 😏

[blite]

Love this, very excited for the teleport features.

[invaders-xx]

I already use it for frontend/backend and other contexts using the great @coleshirley package! And I enjoy the direction Filament takes!
Long live Filament!

[zepfietje]

Thanks! That proves it's the right direction. 🚀

[vv-ac]

This is truly what I was hoping for but did not allow myself to ask for. 🐱‍🏍

[nbejansen]

Great direction! I just finished a package which gives Laravel Jetstream a Filament inspired UI (including team switching and Stripe Customer Portal integration). Maybe I can contribute!

Preview of the package I developed:
https://www.loom.com/share/52d22070c161458aa7a4ec948a3910b2

[AyoobMH]

Looks neat 👌

[itsmejoshua]

Looks good planning to make this specific package public ?

[Pen-y-Fan]

FATALL stack is getting better and better 🎉
(Filament Admin Tailwind Alpine Laravel Livewire)

[mikrosmile]

I would like to pint some thoughts why I choose filament for core app

First I was planning to build my apps using C# and faced that every step I had to create an action / method to do something (simple create / edit records)

Then I was looking for something like CRUD panel, actually I found some on C# (Razr) but also faced limitations with customization and the way how I want some action to be performed

And finally I decided to return to language I know, which is PHP, where I found a great framework Laravel, it fits my needs on 100% and I was searching for an admin panel for that ... and found filament

Since the first day I never consider filament as "admin" panel or "backend", because it has a loft of functionality, the design also fits my UX language & preferences, I like simplicity, yet powerful options to implement all I want, and since that I said myself, this will be my core app, of course I'll build some "external" features from outside filament, but the main core functionality will be filament still.

I like the way where it goes so far, and SaaS billing is what I'm actually waiting for :)

[martin-ro]

Hell of a pivot from C# to PHP, loving it 😅

[Wulfheart]

Language-wise I prefer C#, but Filament is so damn good it is a reason to use Laravel on its own. 😍

[booni3]

I am excited for this! Especially for greater theming opportunities. I V2, I do find theming a little cumbersome vs. building my own app (using something like Tailwind UI components). Interested to see what ideas you come up with.

[MACscr]

Lets not get off topic here, this is a TALL stack project. It wont change. Someone can build a InertiaJS one if they want. - Mark

…

On Dec 24, 2022, at 11:04 AM, Marga Rizaldi ***@***.***> wrote: I hope the day never will come when Filament goes backward in tech stack to Inertia and Vue. Here I'm curious why? 🤔 I'm thinking that inertia with vue is more sophisticated than livewire so far... But since I'm just coding for my business, and not literally a "programmer", I choose filament, because it's super easy to get everything works... — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4400 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAKXAEECEQ5AIO7MVCH6WE3WO4NHZANCNFSM6AAAAAAQ66YXGY>. You are receiving this because you commented.

[R00118189]

Will V3 have decoupled views? I understand https://filamentphp.com/blog/publishing-views-in-laravel shows the dangers of publishing views, but decoupling could give devs more flexibility in regards to how the final product looks

[Wulfheart]

Interesting thought. How would zog decouple this?

[danharrin]

We are satisfied with customising everything with CSS. Decoupling such a huge part of Filament would make the framework quite unmaintainable for us. I am curious as to what you are not able to do with just CSS as we recommend.

[R00118189]

@danharrin, it's less about CSS and more about component design and internal logic. Currently, I create my class extending, say, wizard class and use my customised view file with its internal alpine code. I wonder if it would be possible to add an extra method to overwrite the hardcoded view of the original component. I fully understand the risk you mentioned in the blog post of publishing views.
Therefore if the new view and its internal logic follow the one you maintain, it is easily switchable from the form definition. So we only add the views we need. This would vastly expand our options for the same functionality with various looks.

[danharrin]

Yeah we have that already everywhere in Filament, pass a new ->view() with the name of your custom view

[tpetry]

I don't know whether I am a special snowflake with my requirements. I would like to see the view pages enhanced. Currently this is only the form in a disabled state which is kind of ok for an admin framework. But when using it as an application I would like (on default) to show the data more appealing than using a form. Like Laravel Nova is doing it that you have a nice details page that is not looking like a form at all.

I know that I could write a special Laravel view for every component but that is really tedious and looks strange as I can't fully replicate the same styling. Having this by default as a new rendering way for every filament component would be nice.

[Wulfheart]

I am with @tpetry

[danharrin]

I don't think it'd be possible to automatically convert the form schema into a details schema, would end up pretty complex.

I will work on a POC for the new details pages soon.

[zepfietje]

We could actually create a new Nova-like method which maps to a basic tables/forms/details configuration? Then if you want full control, you just use the separate methods.

[lukas-frey]

Wouldn't it be possible to create new <Something>Detail as Components, so that you can use them inside form()? Just in case you wanted to mix input fields with detail fields.

[nikcani]

We could actually create a new Nova-like method which maps to a basic tables/forms/details configuration? Then if you want full control, you just use the separate methods.

Would love to see this. I like the way Nova does it, but it is missing a lot of customization if you need it.

[romaldyminaya]

@danharrin ,

Have we already mention about the possibility to use the table control from a collection or API instead of an eloquent query? In V2 we've managed a way to do it with a fake model but we need a more standard approach for this.

Thanks in advance.

[danharrin]

No plans for that, we'd have to rebuild all our sorting, searching, filtering... not gonna happen when I have no use for such a feature. Sushi is the official way to handle this.

[romaldyminaya]

Thanks for your fast response.

[margarizaldi]

A new table "mode" may be feasible... Which render kind of datatables (or some better library) that shares exact same UI with the existing table, maybe just putting "if-else" everywhere to switch livewire behavior...... All functionalities (filter sorts etc.) usually are provided by the library...

[Jamesking56]

Is there a planned release date for Filament v3? Waiting for it to build my SaaS

[danharrin]

We need a release date for Livewire v3 first

[Jamesking56]

@danharrin Ah! Didn't realise this was waiting for Livewire v3

[Pen-y-Fan]

calebporzio has posted a discussion for livewire/livewire When V3? #5585

"When V3?"
Right now I can't give you a date, but I CAN be transparent about the process and my progress, so here's what I would type to everyone who asks if I had time:
...

As Filament v3 is waiting for a release date for Livewire v3 it may be worth watching this discussion for an update.

[MACscr]

Because the discussion doesn’t belong here.- MarkOn Feb 26, 2023, at 4:26 PM, Sophist ***@***.***> wrote: @MACscr Mark I see you downvoted my comment - is that because I have got this completely wrong or because you just don't like the comment? —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[AidasK]

You can read all about LiveWire v3 release here livewire/livewire#5585.
It's still not in beta, so I guess we could see livewire to be released in summer and FilamentPhp might be migrated to the livewire v3 a couple months later.

[elmergustavo]

in love the proposals, thanks for your efforts👌

[joshtorres]

This sounds great! I can't wait to see how we can integrate this with the Catalyst framework as we've discuss if it would be possible to use filament for the entire app several times. I'm looking forward to seeing this come out! 😁

[Jamesking56]

Is any of this tagged anywhere in Alpha or Beta form so we can start using it to upgrade to stable later?

[josefbehr]

No. But you can already use the 3.x branch of the repo, if you want to. But beware that there is no guarantee of stability or changes not breaking stuff at the moment.

[cnkbekir]

Livewire V3 will be publicly available after my Laracon talk on July 20th.
-Caleb

https://v3when.com/

[danharrin]

As mentioned above, Filament v3 will be released on August 1st! Thanks for being patient everyone.

[demobiel]

cool, nice that we have a release day. are there already some docs? i am even stuck at just creating a new project from scratch and trying to add a user. It fails at finding the currentPanel, which I guess is a new feature :) don't want to bother with asking questions, but if there is a doc already available, would be nice to have access to it.

[zepfietje]

Using v3 is unsupported as it's still in development.

[demobiel]

thanks for the reply! I just wanted to play around with it :) I guess I am just too exited.