gridprinciples/friendly

Friends system for users, on Laravel.

Friendly

A Laravel 5.1 package designed to enhance Eloquent users with connections between users, including approvals by both users and additional data., _(*1)

Friendly includes many shortcuts to creating one's own Friend system, but the developer is free to implement the details however they require., _(*2)

Installation

1. Run composer require gridprinciples/friendly from your project directory.

2. Add the following to the providers array in config/app.php:, _(*3)

   GridPrinciples\Friendly\Providers\FriendlyServiceProvider::class,
   

3. Publish the migrations and config file:, _(*4)

   php artisan vendor:publish --provider="GridPrinciples\Friendly\Providers\FriendlyServiceProvider"
   

4. Run the migrations:, _(*5)

   php artisan migrate
   

   This will add a friends table to your database to track relationships between models., _(*6)

Usage

Add the Friendly trait to your User model:
use Friendly;, _(*7)

You may now relate users to each other:, _(*8)

// Using the "requesting" user model...
$dad = User::where('name', 'darth')->first();

// ...and the one receiving the friend request...
$kid = User::where('name', 'luke')->first();

// may include "pivot" data.
$dad->befriend($kid, [
    'name'       => 'Father',
    'other_name' => 'Son',
    'start'      => '1980-05-21',
]);

// ...and later, the secondary user approves the request:
$kid->approve($dad);

// At this point, either user is associated with the other via their `friends` attribute (a Collection):
$relatives = $kid->friends->toArray();

// Either user may sever the relationship, resulting in a type of block:
$kid->block($dad);

Pivot Data

The included implementation table includes the following additional information about each friend request:, _(*9)

• name: Describes the requesting user's relationship with the secondary user.
• other_name: Describes the secondary user's relationship with the requesting user.
• start: When the relationship started, or will start.
• end: When the relationship

Reloading the Connections

When time you access the "friends" property on a user Model, the connections will be loaded and cached. If you make changes to a different relationship which would affect a loaded user's friends, you might need to reload them:, _(*10)

$user->resetFriends();