Laravel Love: Likes and Dislikes for Eloquent Models

September 15, 2018 / Paul Redmond

Laravel Love is a package by Anton Komarev that lets people express how they feel about content by liking and disliking Eloquent models. The package works by defining a “liker” model defined with a contract. Most likely this will be your application’s User model:

<?php

use Cog\Contracts\Love\Liker\Models\Liker as LikerContract;
use Cog\Laravel\Love\Liker\Models\Traits\Liker;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;

class User extends Authenticatable implements LikerContract
{
    use Liker;
}

On the other end, you define Eloquent models that can be “liked” by your “liker” model:

use Cog\Contracts\Love\Likeable\Models\Likeable as LikeableContract;
use Cog\Laravel\Love\Likeable\Models\Traits\Likeable;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Article extends Model implements LikeableContract
{
    use Likeable;
}

Here are some available methods this package affords your models:

$user->like($article);
$user->likedBy(); // true/false
$user->unlike($article);
$user->toggleLike($article);

// Dislike
$user->dislike($article);

On likable models you here are some of the methods available:

<?php

$article->likesCount;
$article->dislikesCount;

This package also provides model scopes that you can learn about in the GitHub readme, along with installation instructions and API documentation:

<?php

# Find all articles liked by a user
Article::whereLikedBy($user->id)
    ->with('likesCounter') // Allow eager load (optional)
    ->get();

# Get Articles sorted by likes count asc
$sortedArticles = Article::orderByLikesCount('asc')->get();

# The default sort order is desc
$sortedArticles = Article::orderByLikesCount()->get();

The obvious use-case for this package is showing the number of likes/dislikes on content and even sorting content based on that (i.e., Reddit or Hacker News upvotes).

Another use-case that intrigues me more is trying to recommend content to users, and allowing a user to provide feedback on whether they like or dislike specific recommendations. You could use that data to keep improving the recommended content based on user feedback.

Learn More

You can get installation instructions and documentation on the GitHub repository cybercog/laravel-love. What other use-cases come to mind? Respond to @laravelnews on Twitter and let us know!

Filed in: Laravel Packages