php 37 lines · 5 steps

Auto-pruning old records with Laravel's Prunable

An Eloquent model that periodically deletes stale audit logs and cleans up their archived files as it goes.

Explained by highlit

Laravel Intermediate pruning eloquent cleanup lifecycle-hooks file-storage

1<?php
2 
3namespace App\Models;
4 
5use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
6use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
7use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Prunable;
8use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
9 
10class AuditLog extends Model
11{
12    use Prunable;
13 
14    protected $fillable = [
15        'event',
16        'ip_address',
17        'payload',
18        'archive_path',
19    ];
20 
21    protected $casts = [
22        'payload' => 'array',
23    ];
24 
25    public function prunable(): Builder
26    {
27        return static::where('created_at', '<=', now()->subMonths(3))
28            ->whereNull('retained_at');
29    }
30 
31    protected function pruning(): void
32    {
33        if ($this->archive_path && Storage::disk('audits')->exists($this->archive_path)) {
34            Storage::disk('audits')->delete($this->archive_path);
35        }
36    }
37}

01 / 01

STEP 01

Walkthrough

Space play ←→ step click any line

Three takeaways

1The Prunable trait lets a model define its own retention policy instead of scattering cleanup logic across schedulers.
2A prunable query should exclude records you explicitly want to keep, like ones flagged as retained.
3The pruning hook is the place to release external resources tied to a row, such as files, before deletion.

Related explainers

php

<?php
 
class NameParser
{

Parsing a full name into components in PHP

string-parsing arrays normalization

Intermediate 8 steps

php

<?php
 
namespace App\Services\Checkout;

Validating coupons with Laravel's Pipeline

pipeline chain of responsibility transactions

Intermediate 7 steps

php

<?php
 
namespace App\Services;

How a password strength validator works in PHP

validation regular-expressions data-driven

Intermediate 8 steps

php

<?php
 
namespace App\Services;

Building a cached daily leaderboard in Laravel

caching aggregation eager-loading

Intermediate 9 steps

php

<?php
 
final class RotatingFileLogger
{

How a rotating file logger works in PHP

logging file-rotation io

Intermediate 9 steps

javascript

import { useEffect, useRef, useState } from 'react';
 
export function useDelayedFlag(active, delay = 300) {
  const [visible, setVisible] = useState(false);