Commentable

A Laravel package that adds a polymorphic, infinitely nested comment system to any Eloquent model.

How It Works

• Any model can receive comments via the Commentable trait
• Any model can post comments via the Commenter trait
• Replies can be nested to any depth
• Replies are lazy-loaded — fetch only what you need, when you need it
• Commenters are optional — anonymous comments are supported

Requirements

• PHP ^8.2
• Laravel ^12.0 | ^13.0

Installation

composer require x-laravel/commentable

Run the migration:

php artisan migrate

Setup

Receiving comments

Add Commentable to any model that should receive comments:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use XLaravel\Commentable\Commentable;

class Post extends Model
{
    use Commentable;
}

Posting comments

Add Commenter to any model that should be able to post comments:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use XLaravel\Commentable\Commenter;

class User extends Model
{
    use Commenter;
}

Usage

Adding a comment

// Anonymous
$post->addComment('Great post!');

// With a commenter
$post->addComment('Great post!', $user);

// Via Commenter
$user->comment($post, 'Great post!');

Adding a reply

// Via Commentable
$post->addReply($comment, 'I agree!', $user);

// Via Commenter
$user->reply($post, $comment, 'I agree!');

Replies can be added to any comment or reply. There is no depth limit.

Listing root comments

$post->rootComments()->paginate(20);

Chain relations as needed:

$post->rootComments()->withCount('replies')->with('commenter')->paginate(20);

Listing replies (lazy-load)

$comment->replies()->paginate(10);

$comment->replies()->withCount('replies')->with('commenter')->paginate(10);

Other relations

// All comments on a model (root + replies)
$post->comments()->get();

// All comments posted by a user
$user->comments()->get();

// The parent of a reply
$comment->parent;

// The model a comment belongs to
$comment->commentable;

// Check if a comment is a reply
$comment->isReply(); // true / false

Soft deleting

$comment->delete();       // soft delete
$comment->restore();      // restore
$comment->forceDelete();  // permanent delete (cascades to replies via FK)

Soft-deleting a parent comment does not cascade to its replies. If you want cascade-on-soft-delete behaviour, add a deleting event listener to your application.

Suggested API Design

GET    /posts/{post}/comments           → List root comments (paginated)
POST   /posts/{post}/comments           → Add a comment

GET    /comments/{comment}/replies      → List replies (paginated)
POST   /comments/{comment}/replies      → Add a reply

DELETE /comments/{comment}              → Soft delete a comment

Database

comments
├── id
├── commentable_type   (polymorphic — Post, Event, etc.)
├── commentable_id
├── commenter_type     (nullable polymorphic — User, Admin, etc.)
├── commenter_id
├── parent_id          (nullable FK → comments.id, cascadeOnDelete)
├── body
├── created_at
├── updated_at
└── deleted_at         (soft delete)

Testing

# Build first (once per PHP version)
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0 docker compose --profile php82 build

# Run tests
docker compose --profile php82 up
docker compose --profile php83 up
docker compose --profile php84 up
docker compose --profile php85 up

License

This package is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.