This section is a perfect entry point to get yourself acquainted with projectors. Most examples in these docs are also available in the Laravel app you'll find in this repo on GitHub. Clone that repo to toy around with the package.
A projector is a class that gets triggered when new events come in. It typically writes data (to the database or to a file on disk). We call that written data a projection.
Imagine you are a bank with customers that have accounts. All these accounts have a balance. When money gets added or subtracted we could modify the balance. If we do that however, we would never know why the balance got to that number. If we were to store all the transactions as events we could calculate the balance.
##Creating a model
Here's a small migration to create a table that stores accounts. Using a uuid is not strictly required, but it will make your life much easier when using this package. In all examples we'll assume that you'll use them.
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
class CreateAccountsTable extends Migration
{
public function up()
{
Schema::create('accounts', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->string('uuid');
$table->string('name');
$table->integer('balance')->default(0);
$table->timestamps();
});
}
}
The Account model itself could look like this:
namespace App;
use App\Events\AccountCreated;
use App\Events\AccountDeleted;
use App\Events\MoneyAdded;
use App\Events\MoneySubtracted;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Ramsey\Uuid\Uuid;
class Account extends Model
{
protected $guarded = [];
public static function createWithAttributes(array $attributes): Account
{
$attributes['uuid'] = (string) Uuid::uuid4();
event(new AccountCreated($attributes));
return static::uuid($attributes['uuid']);
}
public function addMoney(int $amount)
{
event(new MoneyAdded($this->uuid, $amount));
}
public function subtractMoney(int $amount)
{
event(new MoneySubtracted($this->uuid, $amount));
}
public function remove()
{
event(new AccountDeleted($this->uuid));
}
public static function uuid(string $uuid): ?Account
{
return static::where('uuid', $uuid)->first();
}
}
##Defining events
Instead of creating, updating and deleting accounts, we're simply firing off events. All these events should extend \Spatie\EventSourcing\StoredEvents\ShouldBeStored. This abstract class signifies to our package that the event should be stored.
Let's take a look at all events used in the Account model.
namespace App\Events;
use Spatie\EventSourcing\StoredEvents\ShouldBeStored;
class AccountCreated extends ShouldBeStored
{
public $accountAttributes;
public function __construct(array $accountAttributes)
{
$this->accountAttributes = $accountAttributes;
}
}
namespace App\Events;
use Spatie\EventSourcing\StoredEvents\ShouldBeStored;
class MoneyAdded extends ShouldBeStored
{
public $accountUuid;
public $amount;
public function __construct(string $accountUuid, int $amount)
{
$this->accountUuid = $accountUuid;
$this->amount = $amount;
}
}
namespace App\Events;
use Spatie\EventSourcing\StoredEvents\ShouldBeStored;
class MoneySubtracted extends ShouldBeStored
{
public $accountUuid;
public $amount;
public function __construct(string $accountUuid, int $amount)
{
$this->accountUuid = $accountUuid;
$this->amount = $amount;
}
}
namespace App\Events;
use Spatie\EventSourcing\StoredEvents\ShouldBeStored;
class AccountDeleted extends ShouldBeStored
{
public $accountUuid;
public function __construct(string $accountUuid)
{
$this->accountUuid = $accountUuid;
}
}
##Creating your first projector
A projector is a class that listens for events that were stored. When it hears an event that it is interested in, it can perform some work.
Let's create your first projector. You can perform php artisan make:projector AccountBalanceProjector to create a projector in app\Projectors.
Here's an example projector that handles all the events mentioned above:
namespace App\Projectors;
use App\Account;
use App\Events\AccountCreated;
use App\Events\AccountDeleted;
use App\Events\MoneyAdded;
use App\Events\MoneySubtracted;
use Spatie\EventSourcing\EventHandlers\Projectors\Projector;
class AccountBalanceProjector extends Projector
{
public function onAccountCreated(AccountCreated $event)
{
Account::create($event->accountAttributes);
}
public function onMoneyAdded(MoneyAdded $event)
{
$account = Account::uuid($event->accountUuid);
$account->balance += $event->amount;
$account->save();
}
public function onMoneySubtracted(MoneySubtracted $event)
{
$account = Account::uuid($event->accountUuid);
$account->balance -= $event->amount;
$account->save();
}
public function onAccountDeleted(AccountDeleted $event)
{
Account::uuid($event->accountUuid)->delete();
}
}
Just by type hinting an event in a method will make the package call that method when the event occurs. As in the example above, make sure the method parameter name is $event. By default the package will automatically discover and register projectors.
##Let's fire off some events
With all this out of the way we can fire off some events.
Let's try adding an account with:
Account::createWithAttributes(['name' => 'Luke']);
Account::createWithAttributes(['name' => 'Leia']);
And let's make some transactions on that account:
$account = Account::where(['name' => 'Luke'])->first();
$anotherAccount = Account::where(['name' => 'Leia'])->first();
$account->addMoney(1000);
$anotherAccount->addMoney(500);
$account->subtractMoney(50);
If you take a look at the contents of the accounts table you should see some accounts together with their calculated balance. Sweet! In the stored_events table you should see an entry per event that we fired.
##Your second projector
Imagine that, after a while, someone at the bank wants to know which accounts have processed the most transactions. Because we stored all changes to the accounts in the events table we can easily get that info by creating another projector.
We are going to create another projector that stores the transaction count per account in a model. Bear in mind that you can easily use any other storage mechanism instead of a model. The projector doesn't care what you use.
Here's the migration and the model class that the projector is going to use:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
class CreateTransactionCountsTable extends Migration
{
public function up()
{
Schema::create('transaction_counts', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->string('account_uuid');
$table->integer('count')->default(0);
$table->timestamps();
});
}
}
If you're following along don't forget to run this new migration.
php artisan migrate
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class TransactionCount extends Model
{
protected $table = 'transactions_count';
protected $guarded = [];
}
Here's the projector that is going to listen to the MoneyAdded and MoneySubtracted events. Typehinting MoneyAdded and MoneySubtracted will make our package call onMoneyAdded and MoneySubtracted when these events occur.
namespace App\Projectors;
use App\Events\MoneyAdded;
use App\Events\MoneySubtracted;
use App\TransactionCount;
use Spatie\EventSourcing\Models\StoredEvent;
use Spatie\EventSourcing\EventHandlers\Projectors\Projector;
class TransactionCountProjector extends Projector
{
public function onMoneyAdded(MoneyAdded $event)
{
$transactionCounter = TransactionCount::firstOrCreate(['account_uuid' => $event->accountUuid]);
$transactionCounter->count += 1;
$transactionCounter->save();
}
public function onMoneySubtracted(MoneySubtracted $event)
{
$transactionCounter = TransactionCount::firstOrCreate(['account_uuid' => $event->accountUuid]);
$transactionCounter->count += 1;
$transactionCounter->save();
}
}
Let's not forget to register this projector:
Projectionist::addProjector(TransactionCountProjector::class);
If you've followed along, you've already created some accounts and some events. To feed those past events to the projector we can simply perform this artisan command:
php artisan event-sourcing:replay App\\Projectors\\TransactionCountProjector
This command will take all events stored in the stored_events table and pass them to TransactionCountProjector. After the command completes you should see the transaction counts in the transaction_counts table.
##Welcoming new events
Now that both of your projections have handled all events, try firing off some new events.
Account::createWithAttributes(['name' => 'Yoda']);
And let's add some transactions to that account:
$yetAnotherAccount = Account::where(['name' => 'Yoda'])->first();
$yetAnotherAccount->addMoney(1000);
$yetAnotherAccount->subtractMoney(50);
You'll notice that both projectors are immediately handling these new events. The balance of the Account model is up to date and the data in the transaction_counts table gets updated.
##Benefits of projectors and projections
The cool thing about projectors is that you can write them after events have happened. Imagine that someone at the bank wants to have a report of the average balance of each account. You would be able to write a new projector, replay all events, and have that data.
Projections are very fast to query. Imagine that our application has processed millions of events. If you want to create a screen where you display the accounts with the most transactions you can easily query the transaction_counts table. This way you don't need to fire off some expensive query. The projector will keep the projections (the transaction_counts table) up to date.
##Using Factories in Tests
In the example above the Account model contains the necessary logic to create an Account, this pattern may require you to revise how you create test data using model factories. One possible solution is illustated below.
public function test_can_have_many_accounts()
{
Account::factory()->times(5)->make()->each(function($account) {
Account::createWithAttributes($account->toArray());
});
$this->assertCount(5, auth()->user()->accounts);
$this->assertInstanceOf(Account::class, auth()->user()->accounts()->first());
}
##Want to know more?
We discuss projections and complex patterns such as CQRS in depth in our Event Sourcing in Laravel course. In practice, you want to check out these chapters: