Laravel Approvable Notifications

Laravel Approvable Notifications adds to your project and handles the missing features of the Laravel notification system, the ability for users to interact with database notifications.

Use Cases

1. Friend Requests
2. Access Requests
3. Anything that requires a third party user to approve or reject.

Installation

1. Install the package via composer:

   composer require toneflix-code/approvable-notifications

2. Publish resources (migrations and config files):

   php artisan vendor:publish --tag=approvable-notifications

3. Run the migrations with the following command:

   php artisan migrate

4. Done!

Package Discovery

Laravel automatically discovers and publishes service providers but optionally after you have installed Laravel Fileable, open your Laravel config file config/app.php and add the following lines.

In the $providers array add the service providers for this package.

ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\ApprovableNotificationsServiceProvider::class

Add the facade of this package to the $aliases array.

'ApprovableNotifications' => ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Facades\ApprovableNotifications::class

Usage

The SendsApprovableNotifications Trait

To be able to send notifications using Approvable Notifications add the \ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\SendsApprovableNotifications trait to your model:

namespace App\Models;

use ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\SendsApprovableNotifications;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use SendsApprovableNotifications;
}

That's it, we only have to use that trait in our model! Now your users may send approvable notifications.

Note: you can use SendsApprovableNotifications trait on any model, it doesn't have to be the user model.

The HasApprovableNotifications Trait

For a model to be able to receive notifications using Approvable Notifications you will also need to add the \ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\HasApprovableNotifications trait to your model:

namespace App\Models;

use ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\HasApprovableNotifications;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasApprovableNotifications;
}

Alternatively, if your model sends and recieves notifications, you can simply add only the ApprovableNotifiable trait on your model.

namespace App\Models;

use ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\ApprovableNotifiable;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use ApprovableNotifiable;
}

Now your model can both send and recieve approvable notifications.

Sending notifications

To send a notification, call the sendApprovableNotification method on the sender model, passing the recipient model, title, message, optional data and optional actionable model parameters.

$faker = \Faker\Factory::create();
$user = \App\Models\User::find(1);
$sender =\App\Models\User::find(12);
$actionable =\App\Models\User::find(5);

$notif = $sender->sendApprovableNotification(
    recipient: $user, // The recieving model
    title: $faker->sentence(4), // The title of the notification
    message: $faker->sentence(10), // The notification text message body
    data: ['icon' => 'fas fa-info'], // Any extra data you would like to store,
    actionable: $actionable, // Any model you would like to access or reference later during retrieval
);

Accessing the Notifications

Once notifications are stored in the database, you need a convenient way to access them from your notifiable entities. The ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\HasApprovableNotifications trait includes a approvableNotifications Eloquent relationship that returns the notifications for the entity. To fetch notifications, you may access this method like any other Eloquent relationship. By default, notifications will be sorted by the created_at timestamp with the most recent notifications at the beginning of the collection:

$user = App\Models\User::find(1);

foreach ($user->approvableNotifications as $notification) {
    echo $notification->title;
}

If you want to retrieve only the "unread" notifications, you may use the unreadApprovableNotifications relationship. Again, these notifications will be sorted by the created_at timestamp with the most recent notifications at the beginning of the collection:

$user = App\Models\User::find(1);

foreach ($user->unreadApprovableNotifications as $notification) {
    echo $notification->title;
}

Or to retrieve "approved" notifications

foreach ($user->approvedApprovableNotifications as $notification) {
    echo $notification->title;
}

Accessing the Notification Sender

You can access the notifier relationship on the notification instance to get the model that sent the notification.

foreach ($user->approvableNotifications as $notification) {
    $sender = $notification->notifier;
    echo $sender->name;
}

Accessing the Actionable model

If you added an actionable model when creating the notification, you can also access the actionable relationship on the notification instance.

foreach ($user->approvableNotifications as $notification) {
    $actionable = $notification->actionable;
    echo $actionable->title;
}

Accessing sent Notifications

Sent notifications also can also be accessed by the sender. The ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\SendsApprovableNotifications trait includes a approvableSentNotifications Eloquent relationship that returns the notifications for the entity that sent them.

$user = App\Models\User::find(1);

foreach ($user->approvableSentNotifications as $notification) {
    echo $notification->title;
}

Marking Notifications as Read

Typically, you will want to mark a notification as "read" when a user views it. The ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\HasApprovableNotifications trait provides a markAsRead method, which updates the read_at column on the notification's database record:

$user = App\Models\User::find(1);

foreach ($user->unreadApprovableNotifications as $notification) {
    echo $notification->markAsRead();
}

However, instead of looping through each notification, you may use the markAsRead method directly on a collection of notifications:

$user->unreadApprovableNotifications->markAsRead();

You may also use a mass-update query to mark all of the notifications as read without retrieving them from the database:

$user = App\Models\User::find(1);
$user->unreadApprovableNotifications()->update(['read_at' => now()]);

Marking Notifications as Approved or Rejected

The primary purpose of this library is to allow you approve or reject actions associated with your models. The ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\HasApprovableNotifications trait provides the markAsApproved and markAsRejected methods, which will update the status column on the notification's database record:

$user = App\Models\User::find(1);

foreach ($user->approvableNotifications as $notification) {
    echo $notification->markAsApproved();
}

$user = App\Models\User::find(1);

foreach ($user->approvableNotifications as $notification) {
    echo $notification->markAsRejected();
}

However, instead of looping through each notification, you may use the markAsApproved and markAsRejected methods directly on a collection of notifications:

$user->approvableNotifications->markAsApproved();

$user->approvableNotifications->markAsRejected();

Deleting Notifications

You may delete the notifications to remove them from the table entirely:

$user->notifications()->delete();

Events and Callback

New Notification

When a new notification is created, we dispatch the ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Events\ApprovableNotificationCreated event which you can listen to and perform further actions if required, the event will contain the associated notification model.

Alternattively, you can also implement the newNotificationCallback methods on your SendsApprovableNotifications entity, which will be called whenever a new notification is created and will provided with the associated $notification model as the first and only parameter.

namespace App\Models;

use ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\SendsApprovableNotifications;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Models\Notification;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use SendsApprovableNotifications;

    public function newNotificationCallback(Notification $notification) {
        // Perform any other actions here when a notification is created
    }
}

Notification Updates

When a notification is interacted with or updated, we dispatch the ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Events\ApprovableNotificationUpdated event which you can listen to and perform further actions if required, the event will contain the associated notification model.

Alternattively, you can also implement the approvedNotificationCallback and the rejectedNotificationCallback methods on your HasApprovableNotifications entity, both of which will be called at the appropriete time as the names imply and will provided with the associated $notification model as the first and only parameter.

namespace App\Models;

use ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\HasApprovableNotifications;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Models\Notification;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasApprovableNotifications;

    public function approvedNotificationCallback(Notification $notification) {
        // Perform any other actions here when a notification is approved
    }

    public function rejectedNotificationCallback(Notification $notification) {
        // Perform any other actions here when a notification is rejected
    }
}

Exceptions

When you attempt to send a notification to an invalid model (a model that does not use the ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Traits\HasApprovableNotifications trait), the library throws the ToneflixCode\ApprovableNotifications\Exception\InvalidRecipientExeption exception.

Testing

composer test

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information what has changed recently.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email code@toneflix.com.ng instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

• Toneflix Code
• All Contributors

License

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