OI Laravel Reviews

Reviews for Laravel — for the website itself and for any of your models. Collect a single rating or a set of coefficient-weighted criteria on one shared grid (0–5, 0–10, whatever you configure), moderate submissions, publish an official reply to the reviews that are not in your favour, and send confirmation, thank-you and reply emails whose copy is stored in oi-lab/oi-laravel-settings so it stays editable at runtime.

Features

• Two review models: ReviewWebsite for the site, ReviewEntry for any polymorphic reviewable model (restricted to a configurable allow-list).
• A single evaluation grid shared by every review and every criterion — switch it from /5 to /10 in config.
• Criteria defined in config (title, description, coefficient); the overall rating is the coefficient-weighted average of the per-criterion scores, or a single direct rating when no criteria are declared.
• Guest or authenticated authors, with per-scope moderation (pending → approved / rejected) and an auto_approve shortcut.
• One official ReviewReply per review, moderated on the same scale.
• Lifecycle emails (confirmation, thank_you, reply) rendered from mail-typed settings, personalised with :placeholders, optionally queued.
• Typed spatie/laravel-data DTOs for every model, config-gated JSON routes, form requests, services and a Reviews facade.
• Lifecycle events (ReviewSubmitted, ReviewApproved, ReviewReplied) and fully swappable models resolved through a static resolver.

How It Works

A review is scored on one grid. Leave criteria empty and a review is just an overall rating. Declare criteria and each is scored individually — the package stores a ReviewRating row per criterion and writes the coefficient-weighted average into the review's rating column, so listings and averages stay a single indexed number. ReviewWebsite and ReviewEntry share the same behaviour; only ReviewEntry adds the polymorphic reviewable link. Every ratings row and the single ReviewReply attach to their review polymorphically, so both review types reuse them.

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• Laravel 11, 12, or 13
• spatie/laravel-data 4.23+
• oi-lab/oi-laravel-settings 1.0+ (mail templates)

Installation

composer require oi-lab/oi-laravel-reviews

Publish & Migrate

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=oi-laravel-reviews-config
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=oi-laravel-reviews-migrations
php artisan migrate

# seed the notification mail templates into the settings store
php artisan reviews:install-settings

Optionally publish the email view to restyle it:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=oi-laravel-reviews-views

Configuration

config/oi-laravel-reviews.php (excerpt):

'grid' => [
    'min' => 0,
    'max' => 5,      // set to 10 for a /10 grid
    'step' => 0.5,   // null to allow any value in range
],

'moderation' => [
    'auto_approve' => false,
],

// Models a ReviewEntry may target, keyed by the alias used in requests
'reviewable_models' => [
    'product' => \App\Models\Product::class,
],

// Criteria are config, not database rows. Empty = a single overall rating.
'criteria' => [
    'website' => [
        'design'  => ['title' => 'Design',  'description' => '', 'coefficient' => 1],
        'support' => ['title' => 'Support', 'description' => '', 'coefficient' => 2],
    ],
    'entries' => [
        'default' => [
            'value' => ['title' => 'Value for money', 'description' => '', 'coefficient' => 1],
        ],
        'product' => [
            'taste' => ['title' => 'Taste', 'description' => '', 'coefficient' => 2],
        ],
    ],
],

'notifications' => [
    'enabled' => true,
    'queue' => true,
    'settings' => [
        'confirmation' => 'reviews.mail.confirmation',
        'thank_you' => 'reviews.mail.thank_you',
        'reply' => 'reviews.mail.reply',
    ],
],

Usage

Submit a website review

use OiLab\OiLaravelReviews\Facades\Reviews;

$review = Reviews::submitWebsiteReview([
    'rating' => 4.5,
    'title' => 'A pleasure to use',
    'body' => 'Fast and clear.',
    'author_name' => 'Jo',
    'author_email' => 'jo@example.com',
]);

Submit a review of one of your models (with criteria)

$review = Reviews::submitEntryReview(
    'product',            // reviewable alias from config
    $product->id,
    ['author_name' => 'Jo', 'author_email' => 'jo@example.com'],
    ['taste' => 4, 'value' => 5],   // criterion key => score
);

$review->rating; // coefficient-weighted average of the criteria

Pass an authenticated user as the last argument to record them as the author instead of a guest:

Reviews::submitWebsiteReview(['rating' => 5], [], $request->user());

Moderate and reply

Reviews::approve($review);   // publishes it and emails a thank-you
Reviews::reject($review);

use OiLab\OiLaravelReviews\Services\ReviewReplyService;

app(ReviewReplyService::class)->reply($review, [
    'body' => 'Thanks for the feedback — here is what happened.',
    'author_name' => 'Support',
]);

JSON endpoints

Loaded under route.prefix (default reviews) when route.enabled is true:

The reply routes honour the optional route.gate.

Events

Listen instead of overriding internals:

• OiLab\OiLaravelReviews\Events\ReviewSubmitted
• OiLab\OiLaravelReviews\Events\ReviewApproved
• OiLab\OiLaravelReviews\Events\ReviewReplied

Notification Emails

Each lifecycle email resolves a MailContent from a mail-typed setting in oi-lab/oi-laravel-settings, falling back to notifications.defaults when the setting is unset. reviews:install-settings seeds those settings; edit them at runtime to change the copy. Placeholders (:author, :title, :rating, :reply) are substituted per message, and delivery is queued when notifications.queue is true.

Customizing Models

Every model is resolved through OiLab\OiLaravelReviews\OiLaravelReviews. Point models.* in the config at your own subclasses to add relations or behaviour without forking the package.

AI Assistant Skills

This package ships an AI-assistant skill. Install it into your project:

php artisan oi:install-ai-skill

Testing

composer test

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

When contributing:

1. Write tests for new features
2. Ensure all tests pass: vendor/bin/pest
3. Follow existing code style
4. Update documentation as needed

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see the License File for more information.

Credits

Olivier Lacombe - Creator and maintainer

Olivier is a Product & Technology Director based in Montpellier, France, with over 20 years of experience innovating in UX/UI and emerging technologies. He specializes in guiding enterprises toward cutting-edge digital solutions, combining user-centered design with continuous optimization and artificial intelligence integration.

Projects & Resources:

• OI Dev Docs - Documentation for all Open Source OI Lab packages
• OnAI - Training courses and masterclasses on generative AI for businesses
• Promptr - Prompt engineering Management Platform

Support

For support, please open an issue on the GitHub repository.