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Laravel Message Flow

• Laravel Message Flow
  • Overview
  • Concepts
    • Messages
    • Outbound Flow
    • Inbound Flow
    • Routing Pipeline
    • Message Statuses
  • Configuration Overview
• Installation
  • Requirements
  • Install Using Composer
  • Publish Migrations and Config
• Setting Up a Shared Queue (Redis Example)
  • The Three Config Layers
  • Step 1 — Redis Server Entry
  • Step 2 — Queue Entry
  • Step 3 — Sender: Outbound Routing
  • Step 4 — Receiver: Worker and Observer
  • Two-Way Communication
• Artisan Commands
  • Create Message
  • List Messages
  • Purge Messages
• Testing

Overview

Laravel Message Flow is a lightweight messaging system for passing structured data between Laravel applications. It is built entirely on Laravel's queue system — if two applications can connect to the same queue (Redis, database, SQS, or any other driver), they can exchange messages.

There are no external dependencies beyond Laravel itself. No message broker to install, no new protocols to learn — just queue connections you already know how to configure.

The original use-case was to replace fragile webhooks between a suite of applications with something easier to set up, monitor and maintain.

Concepts

Messages

A message is any JSON-serialisable data. Each message carries three things:

• A UUID that uniquely identifies the message across applications.
• A name used for routing (which queue to send to) and handling (which observer processes it on the receiving side).
• A payload — the JSON data itself, portable and self-contained with no dependency on models or classes in the source application.

Outbound Flow

Sending a message is as simple as creating a MessageFlowOut model instance. An Eloquent observer detects the new record and dispatches it through a configurable routing pipeline that determines which queue connection and queue name to use, then pushes the message onto that queue.

The outbound message is stored in the message_flow_out table throughout this process, giving you a local audit trail of what was sent.

Inbound Flow

On the receiving application, a standard Laravel queue worker picks up the job and writes it to the local message_flow_in table as a MessageFlowIn model. Your application then handles the message via an Eloquent observer — the same pattern you already use for model events.

Once processed, the inbound message can be marked as complete, failed, or deleted, depending on your application's needs.

Routing Pipeline

The outbound routing pipeline is a sequence of configurable pipe stages (using Laravel's Pipeline) that each message passes through before being dispatched. The default pipeline routes the message to a queue based on its name (via config mappings), dispatches it, and optionally cleans up the local record.

You have full control over this pipeline. You can add custom routing logic, logging, duplicate detection, or anything else — each stage is a simple class implementing a handle method.

Message Statuses

Both inbound and outbound messages track their lifecycle through a status column:

Outbound (MessageFlowOut):

Inbound (MessageFlowIn):

Failed messages are never automatically deleted, so they can be inspected and retried. Completed messages can be cleaned up with the message-flow:purge artisan command or by enabling the DeleteCompleteMessage pipe in the outbound routing pipeline.

Optionally, acknowledgement messages can be sent in the reverse direction to confirm end-to-end delivery:

Configuration Overview

For two-way communication, each app is both sender and receiver — see Two-Way Communication below.

Installation

Requirements

• PHP 8.4 or higher
• Laravel 10, 11 or 12

Install Using Composer

Publish Migrations and Config

You can then run php artisan migrate to migrate the database.

Setting Up a Shared Queue (Redis Example)

This example uses Redis, but any queue driver supported by Laravel will work. The same four steps apply regardless of driver.

The Three Config Layers

Laravel uses the word "connection" at several levels, which can be confusing. Setting up a shared queue touches three config files, each at a different layer:

No changes to your existing Laravel defaults are needed — we just add new entries alongside them.

Step 1 — Redis Server Entry

config/database.php

Add a Redis entry with a fixed prefix so that every application sharing the queue sees the same keys, regardless of each app's global Redis prefix:

Step 2 — Queue Entry

config/queue.php

Add a queue entry that uses the Redis entry from Step 1 as its backend:

Steps 1 and 2 are identical on every application sharing the same message flow. They define the shared transport — not who sends or receives.

Step 3 — Sender: Outbound Routing

config/message-flow.php

Tell Message Flow which queue name to push outbound messages onto. Name each queue after the receiver — this keeps things unambiguous regardless of how many senders push to it:

Different message names can route to different receivers:

Send a message by creating a MessageFlowOut record:

An Eloquent observer dispatches the message through the routing pipeline automatically — no additional code needed on the sender side.

Step 4 — Receiver: Worker and Observer

Start a worker listening on the queue name that senders push to:

The first argument (message-flow-queue) is the queue entry from Step 2. The --queue flag is the queue name from the sender's Step 3 config.

Create an observer to handle incoming messages:

Register the observer in a service provider:

Two-Way Communication

When two applications need to send messages to each other, both act as sender and receiver. The shared infrastructure (Steps 1–2) stays identical on both apps. Each app just needs:

• Its own outbound routing (Step 3) — pointing to the other app's inbound queue
• Its own queue worker (Step 4) — listening on its own inbound queue

Name each queue after the receiver. This makes it clear who consumes which queue, regardless of how many senders push to it.

Core's config/message-flow.php:

Fulfilment's config/message-flow.php:

Both apps share a single Redis entry and a single queue entry — only the outbound queue-name and the worker's --queue flag differ.

For one-way messaging, only the sender needs Step 3 and only the receiver needs Step 4. For two-way, each app does both.

Artisan Commands

This package introduces a few new artisan commands:

Create Message

This command allows you to create a new outbound message.

php artisan message-flow:create-message \
    --name='routing-name' \
    --payload='{"json":"payload"}' \
    --status=new

If no options are provided, the name will be default, the status new and the payload an empty object.

List Messages

This command will list the messages currently in the cache tables. These are messages that are being sent, or have been sent and have not yet been deleted. They are also messages that have been received and also not been deleted.

php artisan message-flow:list-messages \
    --direction={inbound|outbound} \
    --status={new|complete|failed|other} \
    --uuid={uuid-of-message} \
    --limit=20 \
    --page=1 \
    --process

The status and uuid options can take multiple values.

The limit option sets the number of records returned. This is effectively the page size.

The page option specifies which page (of size limit) to display. Page numbers start at 1 for the first page.

The process option will dispatch jobs for messages that have not yet been processed. For outbound messages that will be matching messages in the new or failed states. This will generally only be needed for testing or kicking off failed observers. For inbound messages in the new state, this will fire the eloquent created event to kick the custom observers into action.

With the -v option, the payload will be included in the listing. Some payloads may be large.

Purge Messages

This command deletes old messages from the inbound and/or outbound cache tables. By default it purges records with a complete status that were last updated more than 30 days ago.

php artisan message-flow:purge \
    --days=30 \
    --hours=0 \
    --direction={inbound|outbound|both} \
    --status={complete|failed} \
    --dry-run

The --days and --hours options are combined to set the age threshold. For example, --days=1 --hours=12 purges records older than 36 hours, and --days=0 --hours=6 purges records older than 6 hours.

The --direction option defaults to both. Abbreviations are accepted (e.g. --direction=in or --direction=out).

The --status option can be specified multiple times to purge records in more than one status. It defaults to complete if not specified.

The --dry-run option shows how many records would be deleted without actually deleting them.

Running manually

Purge all completed messages older than 30 days from both tables:

php artisan message-flow:purge

Purge completed and failed inbound messages older than 7 days:

php artisan message-flow:purge --days=7 --direction=inbound --status=complete --status=failed

Preview what would be deleted:

php artisan message-flow:purge --days=14 --dry-run

Scheduling

To run the purge automatically, add it to your application's scheduler.

In routes/console.php (Laravel 11+):

Or in a service provider's boot() method:

Testing

Tests use Orchestra Testbench and PHPUnit:

TODO

• Names and routing (advanced config).
• Outbound pipeline (advanced config).
• Tests to complete.
• A simple quickstart example with two applications talking to each other.