Handle ownership relationships between Eloquent models with Laravel Ownable
Last updated on by Yannick Lyn Fatt
The Laravel Ownable package, created by Abdullah Sowailem, provides a flexible and straightforward way to manage ownership of any model by another model in your Laravel application.
Key Features
- Flexible Ownership: Any model can own any other model
- Ownership Transfer: Transfer ownership between different owners
- Ownership History: Keep track of ownership changes over time
- Current Owner: Easily retrieve the current owner of any ownable item
- Bulk Operations: Check ownership status and manage multiple ownables
- Automatic Cleanup: Automatically clean up ownership records when models are deleted
- Facade Support: Use the convenient Owner facade for ownership operations
Example Usage
Let's say we have User and Task models. With the Laravel Ownable package, we can represent ownership by using the Owner and Ownable contracts along with the HasOwnables and isOwnable traits in our respective models.
use Sowailem\Ownable\Traits\HasOwnables;use Sowailem\Ownable\Contracts\Owner as OwnerContract; // Owner model (e.g., User)class User extends Authenticatable implements OwnerContract{ use HasOwnables;}
use Sowailem\Ownable\Traits\IsOwnable;use Sowailem\Ownable\Contracts\Ownable as OwnableContract; // Ownable Modelclass Task extends Model implements OwnableContract{ use IsOwnable;}
With that now in place, you have several methods available on your models to give, take, remove, and check ownership.
$user = User::first();$task = Task::first(); // Give a user ownership of a task$user->giveOwnershipTo($task); $task->ownedBy($user); if ($task->isOwnedBy($user)) { // Check if the user owns the task} // Transfer ownership to another user$someOtherUser = User::find(2);$user->transferOwnership($task, $someOtherUser); // Get the current owner of an item$currentOwner = $task->currentOwner(); // Get all owners (including historical ownership)$allOwnersOfTheTask = $task->owners()->get(); // Remove Ownership$user->takeOwnershipFrom($task);
If you prefer to use the Facade implementation, it is also available.
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;use Sowailem\Ownable\Facades\Owner; $user = User::find(4);$task = Task::find(2); Owner::give($user, $task); if (Owner::check($user, $task)) { Log::info("User {$user->id} is the owner of task {$task->id}");} $newOwner = User::find(1); Owner::transfer($user, $newOwner, $task);Log::info("Task {$task->id} is now owned by {$task->currentOwner()->name}");
Another nice feature of this package is that it includes a migration that helps keep track of changes in the ownership of your Models. The entries in your database look similar to this:

Learn more about this package and view the source code on GitHub.