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Logic-as-Data for Laravel

🌟 Introduction

Logic-as-Data is a high-performance, database-driven rules engine designed specifically for Laravel applications.

In modern applications — especially in e-commerce marketing and loyalty programs — business logic changes faster than code can be deployed. Hardcoding conditional logic (like "If user is Gold AND cart > $100") into your controllers creates technical debt and requires a developer for every minor campaign adjustment.

This package flips the script by allowing you to store complex business logic as structured JSON data in your database.

⚠️ Beta Version
This package is currently in Beta. Expect frequent updates and potential breaking changes until we reach version 1.0.0. Please report any issues or bugs on the GitHub repository.

Why Logic-as-Data?

• Decouple Logic from Code: Move your "if/else" blocks out of your codebase and into your database. Empower non-technical stakeholders to influence application behavior without a deployment.
• Context-Aware Evaluation: Pass any real-time data (Context) to the engine to evaluate against your stored rules (Predicates).
• Total Observability: Every time the engine fires, it leaves a "Telemetry" trail. You can see exactly why a rule passed or failed, how long it took to execute, and who triggered it.
• Developer First: Built with a modern Vue 3 + Tailwind CSS administrative interface, clean Laravel Facades, and a focus on DX (Developer Experience).

Whether you are building a dynamic discount engine, a tiered loyalty system, or a complex notification router, Logic-as-Data provides the infrastructure to make your application's logic as flexible as your data.

✨ Key Features

• JSON-Based Predicates & Actions: Define both your conditional logic (Predicates) and the resulting tasks (Actions) as structured JSON. This allows you to store entire business workflows in the database instead of hardcoding them in PHP.
• Automated Action Execution: The engine doesn't just evaluate; it acts. Whenever a predicate is successfully met, the package can automatically trigger your predefined actions—such as applying a discount, awarding loyalty points, or firing off a system event.
• High-Fidelity Telemetry: Stop guessing why a rule didn't fire. Every execution is logged with a detailed audit trail, including execution duration, the authenticated user (Causer), and the exact request/session IDs.
• Deep Trace Inspection: Visualize the "Logic Trace" of every event. Through the dashboard, you can see exactly which part of a complex predicate passed, failed, or was skipped during evaluation.
• Ready-to-Use Admin Dashboard: A fully responsive, modern UI built with Vue 3 and Tailwind CSS. Monitor your engine's performance and debug logic flows in real-time through a dedicated interface that works out of the box.
• Context & Subject Mapping: Dynamically pass real-time data (Context) and evaluate it against specific database entities (Source and Target) for hyper-targeted loyalty and marketing logic.
• Developer-First Integration: Engineered for rapid implementation with a robust Laravel Facade, clear PSR-4 namespacing, and a focus on clean DX (Developer Experience).

📋 Requirements

To use Logic-as-Data, your Laravel application must meet the following requirements:

• PHP: ^8.3
• Laravel: ^10.0, ^11.0, or ^12.0
• Composer: ^2.0

Note: No frontend dependencies (Node.js/NPM) are required for the host application to use this package. All Admin UI assets are pre-compiled and can be published directly to your public directory.

🚀 Installation

The package is designed to be up and running in seconds using an automated installation command. Follow these steps to integrate Logic-as-Data into your Laravel application.

1. Install via Composer

Since the package is currently in Beta, ensure you specify the version or allow beta releases:

2. Run the Automated Installer

We provide a dedicated install command that handles publishing the configuration, migrations, frontend assets and a customizable App-level Service Provider.

During this process, the installer will:

• Publish the logic-as-data.php configuration file.
• Copy the LogicAsDataServiceProvider.php to your app/Providers directory.
• Publish the database migrations.
• Publish the pre-compiled Vue/Tailwind Admin UI assets.
• Prompt you to run the migrations immediately.

3. Register the Service Provider

To ensure your custom source extractors, operators, target resolvers, evaluators, actions are loaded correctly, you must register the newly published Service Provider in your application.

For Laravel 11 & 12:

Add the provider to bootstrap/providers.php:

For Laravel 10:

Add the provider to the providers array in config/app.php:

4. Verify the Installation

Once installed and registered, you can access the Logic as Data Dashboard to verify that the installation is successful and assets are loading correctly:

• URL: your-app.test/admin/logic-as-data
• Gate: By default, access is restricted to the local environment. To customize access for production, modify the viewLogicAsData gate inside your app/Providers/LogicAsDataServiceProvider.php.

🔒 Access Control & Security

By default, the Logic-as-Data dashboard is strictly protected. The package defines a Laravel Gate named viewLogicAsData to prevent unauthorized access to your telemetry logs and logic rules in production.

Default Behavior

In the core service provider, the access is restricted to the local environment only:

Customizing Access

To authorize specific users or roles in production, you should modify the Gate definition inside your published Service Provider located at: app/Providers/LogicAsDataServiceProvider.php

Here are common real-world examples of how to restrict access:

1. Restrict by Admin Email

If you want to give access only to specific team members:

2. Restrict by Role (e.g., Spatie Permissions)

If your application uses a role/permission system, you can check for a specific capability:

3. Combine Environment & User ID

A robust approach that allows local development for everyone but restricts production to a specific Super Admin:

⚙️ Configuration

After running the installer, a configuration file will be published to config/logic-as-data.php. You can customize the behavior of the Logic as Data engine and the dashboard here.

Most settings are pre-configured to work with .env variables for easy environment management.

🏠 Dashboard & Routes

Customize how you access the Admin UI.

• route.prefix: The URL path for the dashboard. (Default: admin/logic-as-data).
• route.middleware: The middleware stack applied to the dashboard routes. By default, it uses ['web', 'auth'] to ensure only logged-in users can access it.

📊 Telemetry & Tracing

The telemetry system records every logic evaluation for debugging and auditing.

• telemetry.enabled: Set to false if you want to stop recording logs to the database (useful for extreme high-traffic environments).
• telemetry.strict:
  • True (Default for Local): Any failure in the telemetry logging process (like a DB error) will throw an exception to help you debug.
  • False (Recommended for Production): Telemetry failures will be caught silently so they never crash a critical user request.

⚡ Performance (Caching)

Since rules are often evaluated on every request, the package includes an intelligent caching layer.

• cache.enabled: Highly recommended to keep this true. The cache is automatically cleared whenever you create, update, or delete a LogicRule.
• cache.ttl: How long the rules remain in cache (Default: 86400 seconds / 24 hours).

🗄️ Database Tables

If the default table names conflict with your existing database schema, you can rename them here before running the migrations:

• tables.rules: Stores your JSON conditions and actions (Default: logic_rules).
• tables.telemetry: Stores the high-level execution logs (Default: logic_telemetry).
• tables.traces: Stores the granular pass/fail details for every condition (Default: logic_traces).

🔑 Environment Variables

You can quickly configure the package by adding these keys to your .env file:

🧠 Core Concepts

To effectively use Logic-as-Data, it helps to understand the vocabulary of the engine. The package revolves around evaluating a Predicate (a set of conditions) and executing Actions if those conditions are met.

1. Hooks & Context

When you want the engine to run, you dispatch an event to a specific Hook and pass it real-time Context.

• Hook: A string identifier where rules are attached (e.g., cart.checkout or user.login).
• Context: An array of real-time data passed from your application to the engine (e.g., the current $user model or $cart totals).

2. The Predicate (The Rule)

A Predicate is the actual JSON logic stored in the database. It is evaluated by the PredicateEvaluator and consists of two main parts:

• Combinators: Logical groupings (AND / OR). The engine supports infinite nesting of combinators and automatically handles short-circuiting for maximum performance.
• Clauses: The individual conditions being checked.

Every single Clause is made up of three distinct parts: a Source, an Operator, and a Target.

A. Source (Extractors)

The Source is the "left hand side" of the equation. It defines what data we are looking at. Sources are resolved using Extractors. For example, the alias user.email uses the LaraWave\LogicAsData\Extractors\UserExtractor to pull the email address from the Context.

B. Operators

The Operator is the comparison engine. It compares the extracted Source against the resolved Target. The package includes dozens of built-in operators mapped in the LogicRegistry, including:

• Equality: equals, not_equals
• Relational: greater_than, less_than_or_equal
• String/Array: contains, starts_with, in_array, has_any_of
• State: is_empty, is_not_null

C. Target (Resolvers)

The Target is the "right hand side" of the equation. It defines what we are comparing the Source against. Targets use Resolvers. The most common resolver is core.literal, which allows you to hardcode a value (like checking if an email ends with @example.com). However, targets can also be dynamic, like checking if a user's setting matches a system.config value.

3. Actions

While the engine can be used purely for boolean evaluation (returning true or false), it is also capable of Execution.

If a Predicate successfully passes, the engine can execute an array of Actions. Actions are predefined PHP classes (like LogMessageAction or LogoutAction) that map to a specific alias. They accept parameters defined directly in your JSON.

🧩 Extending the Engine

While Logic-as-Data ships with few built-in source extractors, operators, target resolvers and actions, every application has unique business logic. You will inevitably need to create custom Extractors/Resolvers (e.g., to get a user's loyalty tier) or custom Actions (e.g., to apply a specific discount code).

To make this seamless, the package includes dedicated Artisan generators that scaffold these classes for you, complete with the required metadata() methods for the Admin UI.

Artisan Generators

Run any of the following commands in your terminal to generate a new component. By default, these classes are published to your app/LogicAsData directory.

The Custom Component Workflow

Adding a custom component to your logic engine always follows three simple steps:

Step 1: Generate & Implement

Run the Artisan command and open the generated file (e.g., app/Logic/Extractors/UserLoyaltyExtractor.php). Implement your PHP logic in the primary method (like extract() or execute()).

Step 2: Configure UI Metadata

Inside the generated class, you will see a metadata() method. Update the label, description, and fields array. This ensures your custom component seamlessly appears in the Vue 3 Admin Dashboard with the correct input fields.

Step 3: Register the Component

For the Logic Engine to recognize your new component, you simply add it to the corresponding array in the App-level Service Provider.

When you ran php artisan logic-as-data:install, the package published a dedicated provider to your application at app/Providers/LogicAsDataServiceProvider.php.

Open this file and map your new classes to their JSON aliases:

The Service Provider will automatically loop through these arrays during the boot cycle and register them with the underlying LogicRegistry. Once registered, your business team can immediately start using "user.loyalty_tier" and "cart.apply_discount" in their JSON rules via the Admin UI!

The Two Execution Methods

Because of this architecture, the LogicEngine provides two distinct ways to interact with your rules:

1. LogicEngine::passes(): Evaluates the predicate. Returns a boolean, but does not execute actions. (Great for "Should I show this button?" checks).
2. LogicEngine::trigger(): Evaluates the predicate and, if it passes, automatically executes the attached Actions. (Great for automated workflows).