README

A Laravel package that adds a polymorphic, infinitely nested comment system to any Eloquent model.

How It Works

Any model can receive comments via the Commentable trait
Any model can post comments via the Commenter trait
Replies can be nested to any depth
Replies are lazy-loaded — fetch only what you need, when you need it
Commenters are optional — anonymous comments are supported

Requirements

PHP ^8.2
Laravel ^12.0 | ^13.0

Installation

composer require x-laravel/commentable

Run the migration:

php artisan migrate

Setup

Receiving comments

Add Commentable to any model that should receive comments:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use XLaravel\Commentable\Commentable;

class Post extends Model
{
    use Commentable;
}

Posting comments

Add Commenter to any model that should be able to post comments:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use XLaravel\Commentable\Commenter;

class User extends Model
{
    use Commenter;
}

Usage

Adding a comment

// Anonymous
$post->addComment('Great post!');

// With a commenter
$post->addComment('Great post!', $user);

// Via Commenter
$user->comment($post, 'Great post!');

Adding a reply

// Via Commentable
$post->addReply($comment, 'I agree!', $user);

// Via Commenter
$user->reply($post, $comment, 'I agree!');

Replies can be added to any comment or reply. There is no depth limit.

Listing root comments

$post->rootComments()->paginate(20);

Chain relations as needed:

$post->rootComments()->withCount('replies')->with('commenter')->paginate(20);

Listing replies (lazy-load)

$comment->replies()->paginate(10);

$comment->replies()->withCount('replies')->with('commenter')->paginate(10);

Other relations

// All comments on a model (root + replies)
$post->comments()->get();

// All comments posted by a user
$user->comments()->get();

// The parent of a reply
$comment->parent;

// The model a comment belongs to
$comment->commentable;

// Check if a comment is a reply
$comment->isReply(); // true / false

Soft deleting

$comment->delete();       // soft delete
$comment->restore();      // restore
$comment->forceDelete();  // permanent delete (cascades to replies via FK)

Soft-deleting a parent comment does not cascade to its replies. If you want cascade-on-soft-delete behaviour, add a deleting event listener to your application.

Suggested API Design

GET    /posts/{post}/comments           → List root comments (paginated)
POST   /posts/{post}/comments           → Add a comment

GET    /comments/{comment}/replies      → List replies (paginated)
POST   /comments/{comment}/replies      → Add a reply

DELETE /comments/{comment}              → Soft delete a comment

Database

comments
├── id
├── commentable_type   (polymorphic — Post, Event, etc.)
├── commentable_id
├── commenter_type     (nullable polymorphic — User, Admin, etc.)
├── commenter_id
├── parent_id          (nullable FK → comments.id, cascadeOnDelete)
├── body
├── created_at
├── updated_at
└── deleted_at         (soft delete)

Testing

# Build first (once per PHP version)
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0 docker compose --profile php82 build

# Run tests
docker compose --profile php82 up
docker compose --profile php83 up
docker compose --profile php84 up
docker compose --profile php85 up

License

This package is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.

x-laravel / commentable

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