README

Laravel Last Seen

A simple Laravel package to track a user's last seen and recently seen status. This package provides traits, middleware, events, and configuration to easily record and query when a user was last active in your Laravel application.

Features

• Automatically update the last_seen_at timestamp for users
• Middleware to detect user activity
• Event-based architecture for extensibility
• Query scopes and helper methods to check if a user was recently seen
• Configurable thresholds for updating and checking activity
• Migration publishing for easy setup

Requirements

PHP

PHP 8.2 or higher

Supported Laravel Versions

Installation

1. Install the package via Composer:

   composer require taldres/laravel-last-seen

2. Publish the migration and configuration files:

   php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Taldres\LastSeen\LastSeenServiceProvider"

3. Clear the configuration cache to ensure the new settings are loaded:

   php artisan optimize:clear
   # or
   php artisan config:clear

4. Run the migration to create the necessary database table:

   php artisan migrate

5. Add the Taldres\LastSeen\Trait\LastSeen trait to your User model:

   use Taldres\LastSeen\Trait\LastSeen;
   
   class User extends Authenticatable
   {
       use LastSeen;
       // ...
   }

6. Add the middleware to your web or api middleware group or any other endpoint:

   // ...
   \Taldres\LastSeen\Middleware\UpdateLastSeenMiddleware::class,
   // ...

Configuration

If necessary or in case of a newer version, you can publish the configuration file to customize the package settings:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Taldres\LastSeen\LastSeenServiceProvider" --tag="config"

or this command to force overwrite the existing configuration file:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Taldres\LastSeen\LastSeenServiceProvider" --tag="config" --force

In the config/last-seen.php file, you can specify the User model to be used for tracking last seen timestamps:

• user: The fully qualified class name of the User model to be used for tracking last seen timestamps.

All other settings—such as enabling/disabling the feature, update thresholds, and recently seen thresholds—can be controlled via environment variables in your .env file:

• LAST_SEEN_ENABLED: Enables or disables the package globally (default: true). It affects only the updateLastSeenAt method and the middleware.
• LAST_SEEN_UPDATE_THRESHOLD: Minimum seconds between last_seen_at updates (default: 60)
• LAST_SEEN_RECENTLY_SEEN_THRESHOLD: Seconds a user is considered recently seen after last activity (default: 300)

Each setting has a default value, so you only need to override them if you want to change the default behavior.

Usage

Checking Activity

• $user->recentlySeen(): Returns true if the user was active within the configured threshold.
• User::onlyRecentlySeen(): Query scope to get only users recently seen.

Events

The package fires a UserWasActiveEvent whenever user activity is detected. You can listen to this event for custom logic.

Manually Dispatching the Event

You can also dispatch the UserWasActiveEvent from your own application code:

use Taldres\LastSeen\Events\UserWasActiveEvent;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Event;

Event::dispatch(new UserWasActiveEvent($user));

License

MIT