#[Transactional] Laravel Controllers

Effortlessly wrap your controller actions with database transactions.

class ExampleUsageController
{
    #[Transactional]
    public function demo(Request $request)
    {
        User::create($request->all());
        User::create($request->all());

        throw new Exception("Everything will be rolled back!");
    }
}

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require niclas-van-eyk/laravel-transactional-controllers

Background

If you want to make a series of edits to your database, where either all should happen at once, or none at all, you typically use database transactions. The example we use here is a user ($author) transferring a certain $amount of to another user ($receiver). We also want to save that the fact that this transfer took place in a separate model (TransferLog).

Usage

Before you might have written something like this:

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Requests\TransferMoneyRequest;
use App\Models\TransferLog;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

class BankAccountController 
{
    public function transferMoney(TransferMoneyRequest $request)
    {
        return DB::transaction(function () use ($request) {
            $request->author->balance->decrement($request->amount);
            $request->receiver->balance->increment($request->amount);

            return TransferLog::createFromTransferRequest($request);
        })
    }
}

You have to wrap your whole code inside one big closure, explicitly use all parameters you inject, and if you want to return something from inside the transaction closure, you end up with this double return, making the code harder to read and your IDE angry.

laravel-transactional-controllers solves this, by eliminating the need to wrap the code inside a closure and instead adding the Transactional attribute to the controller method:

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Requests\TransferMoneyRequest;
use App\Models\TransferLog;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use NiclasVanEyk\TransactionalControllers\Transactional; // <-- from this package

class BankAccountController 
{
    #[Transactional]
    public function transferMoney(TransferMoneyRequest $request): TransferLog
    {
        $request->author->balance->decrement($request->amount);
        $request->receiver->balance->increment($request->amount);

        return TransferLog::createFromTransferRequest($request);
    }
}

No more use, double returns or your IDE complaining about it not being able to guarantee a correct return type!

You can also explicitly specify the database connection to use for running the transaction (config('database.default') is used by default):

    #[Transactional(connection: 'other')]
    public function store() {}

Limitations

This only works when using controllers:

use NiclasVanEyk\TransactionalControllers\Transactional;

// Works ✅
class RegularController
{
    #[Transactional] 
    public function store() {}
}
Route::post('/regular-store', [RegularController::class, 'store']);

// Works ✅
class InvokableController
{
    #[Transactional]
    public function __invoke() {}
}
Route::post('/invokable-store', InvokableController::class);

// Does not work ❌
Route::post(
    '/invokable-store', 
    #[Transactional]
    function () { /* Will not open a transaction! */},
)

Implementation Details

This package uses Laravels ControllerDispatcher component, which determines how the controller action should be executed. This means we can defer opening a transaction until the last possible moment, preventing unnecessary transactions from being opened! If e.g. the validation inside a FormRequest fails, or a model is not found when using route model binding, no transaction is started.

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Contributing

If you have any ideas for changes, feel free to open issues, PRs or fork the project.

Local Development

This assumes you already have installed sqlite, PHP, and all composer dependencies locally.

Run tests

composer test

Run formatter

composer fix-cs

Run analysis

composer analyse

Run all of the above at once

composer ci

Credits

• Niclas van Eyk
• All Contributors

License

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