Laravel Auditing

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Audit presentation

The metadata and modified data can be accessed in several ways.

Metadata

The Audit data is referred as metadata, since it's information about the modified attributes of an Auditable model.

Metadata can be fetched through the getMetadata() method as an array.

php
var_dump($audit->getMetadata());

Output:

php
array(11) {
  ["audit_id"]=>
  string(1) "1"
  ["audit_event"]=>
  string(7) "updated"
  ["audit_url"]=>
  string(29) "http://example.com/articles/1"
  ["audit_ip_address"]=>
  string(9) "127.0.0.1"
  ["audit_user_agent"]=>
  string(68) "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0"
  ["audit_tags"]=>
  string(7) "foo,bar"
  ["audit_created_at"]=>
  string(19) "2017-01-01 01:02:03"
  ["audit_updated_at"]=>
  string(19) "2017-01-01 01:02:03"
  ["user_id"]=>
  string(1) "1"
  ["user_type"]=>
  string(8) "App\User"
  ["user_email"]=>
  string(15) "bob@example.com"
  ["user_name"]=>
  string(3) "Bob"
}

Passing true as the first argument will convert the data into its JSON representation.

php
echo $audit->getMetadata(true, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

TIP

The second argument accepts a bitmask of options. To know more, read the json_encode() function documentation.

Output:

json
{
    "audit_id": "1",
    "audit_event": "updated",
    "audit_url": "http:\/\/example.com\/articles\/1",
    "audit_ip_address": "127.0.0.1",
    "audit_user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0",
    "audit_tags": "foo,bar",
    "audit_created_at": "2017-01-01 01:02:03",
    "audit_updated_at": "2017-01-01 01:02:03",
    "user_id": "1",
    "user_type": "App\\User",
    "user_email":"bob@example.com",
    "user_name":"Bob"
}

INFO

Depending on the $visible property of the User model, other user_ prefixed attributes may become available.

Lastly, the Audit attributes can also be accessed directly, like in any other Eloquent model:

php
echo $audit->id.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->event.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->url.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->ip_address.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->user_agent.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->tags.PHP_EOL;
echo implode(',', $audit->getTags()).PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->created_at->toDateTimeString().PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->updated_at->toDateTimeString().PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->user_id.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->user_type.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->user->email.PHP_EOL;
echo $audit->user->name.PHP_EOL;

Output:

txt
1
updated
http://example.com/articles/1
127.0.0.1
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
foo,bar
foo,bar
2017-01-01 01:02:03
2017-01-01 01:02:03
1
App\User
bob@example.com
Bob

Modified

The modified data is a set of Auditable model attributes that changed since the last event: created, updated, deleted and restored.

Only modified attributes will make part of the array, which consists in the old and new values for each one.

php
var_dump($audit->getModified());

Output:

php
array(2) {
  ["title"]=>
  array(2) {
    ["new"]=>
    string(28) "How To Audit Eloquent Models"
    ["old"]=>
    string(19) "How to audit models"
  }
  ["content"]=>
  array(2) {
    ["new"]=>
    string(56) "First, start by installing the laravel-auditing package."
    ["old"]=>
    string(16) "This is a draft."
  }
}

Like with the getMetadata() method, passing true as the first argument will convert the data into a JSON string.

php
echo $audit->getModified(true);

Output:

json
{"title":{"new":"How To Audit Eloquent Models","old":"How to audit models"},"content":{"new":"First, start by installing the laravel-auditing package.","old":"This is a draft."}}

TIP

The getModified() method honors all attribute mutators and/or casts defined in the Auditable model, transforming the data accordingly.

Direct access to the old and new values is also possible:

php
var_dump($audit->old_values, $audit->new_values);

Output:

php
array(2) {
  ["title"]=>
  string(19) "How to audit models"
  ["content"]=>
  string(16) "This is a draft."
}
array(2) {
  ["title"]=>
  string(28) "How To Audit Eloquent Models"
  ["content"]=>
  string(56) "First, start by installing the laravel-auditing package."
}

Examples

To better understand how the Audit methods can be used, here are some presentation examples.

Listing Audits

Displaying a Collection of Audit models in an HTML unordered list.

Article translation file:

php
return [
    // ...

    'unavailable_audits' => 'No Article Audits available',

    'updated'            => [
        'metadata' => 'On :audit_created_at, :user_name [:audit_ip_address] updated this record via :audit_url',
        'modified' => [
            'title'   => 'The Title has been modified from <strong>:old</strong> to <strong>:new</strong>',
            'content' => 'The Content has been modified from <strong>:old</strong> to <strong>:new</strong>',
        ],
    ],

    // ...
];

Blade template:

php
<ul>
    @forelse ($audits as $audit)
    <li>
        @lang('article.updated.metadata', $audit->getMetadata())

        @foreach ($audit->getModified() as $attribute => $modified)
        <ul>
            <li>@lang('article.'.$audit->event.'.modified.'.$attribute, $modified)</li>
        </ul>
        @endforeach
    </li>
    @empty
    <p>@lang('article.unavailable_audits')</p>
    @endforelse
</ul>

TIP

The use of pagination should be taken into account when dealing with large Audit collections.

Displaying a single Audit

Present a single Audit using a diff like view.

Common translation file:

php
return [
    // ...

    'attribute'  => 'Attribute',
    'event'      => 'Event',
    'id'         => 'ID',
    'ip_address' => 'IP Address',
    'user_agent' => 'User Agent',
    'new'        => 'New',
    'old'        => 'Old',
    'url'        => 'URL',
    'user'       => 'User',
    'tags'       => 'Tags',

    // ...
];

Vue app to set the data:

javascript
new Vue({
    el: '.container',
    data: {
        metadata: JSON.parse(document.getElementById('article').getAttribute('data-metadata')),
        modified: JSON.parse(document.getElementById('article').getAttribute('data-modified'))
    }
});

Blade template with Vue data bindings:

php
<div id="article" class="container" data-metadata='{!! $audit->getMetadata(true) !!}' data-modified='{!! $audit->getModified(true) !!}'>
    <div v-model="metadata">
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-3">
                <strong>@lang('common.id')</strong>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-9">@{{ metadata.audit_id }}</div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-3">
                <strong>@lang('common.event')</strong>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-9">@{{ metadata.audit_event }}</div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-3">
                <strong>@lang('common.user')</strong>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-9">@{{ metadata.user_name }}</div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-3">
                <strong>@lang('common.ip_address')</strong>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-9">@{{ metadata.audit_ip_address }}</div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-3">
                <strong>@lang('common.user_agent')</strong>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-9">@{{ metadata.audit_user_agent }}</div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-3">
                <strong>@lang('common.tags')</strong>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-9">@{{ metadata.audit_tags.join() }}</div>
        </div>
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-md-3">
                <strong>@lang('common.url')</strong>
            </div>
            <div class="col-md-9">@{{ metadata.audit_url }}</div>
        </div>
    </div>

    <hr/>

    <table class="table table-striped">
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <th>@lang('common.attribute')</th>
                <th>@lang('common.old')</th>
                <th>@lang('common.new')</th>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <tr v-for="(value, attribute) in modified">
                <td><strong>@{{ attribute }}</strong></td>
                <td class="danger">@{{ value.old }}</td>
                <td class="success">@{{ value.new }}</td>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
    </table>
</div>

Released under the MIT License.

Copyright © 2015-present Antério Vieira