Laravel User Messenger

Nov 25, 2014 by Eric L. Barnes

Chris Gmyr has a new Laravel package that allows you to easily integrate a user messaging system.

Laravel Messenger

This package will allow you to add a full user messaging system into your Laravel application.

Leave some feedback

Multiple conversations per user
Optionally loop in additional users with each new message
View the last message for each thread available
Returns either all messages in the system, all messages associated to the user, or all message associated to the user with new/unread messages
Return the users unread message count easily
Very flexible usage so you can implement your own access control

Installation instructions for Laravel 4 can be found here.

composer require cmgmyr/messenger

Or place manually in composer.json:

"require": {
    "cmgmyr/messenger": "~2.0"
}

Run:

composer update

Add the service provider to config/app.php under providers:

'providers' => [
    Cmgmyr\Messenger\MessengerServiceProvider::class,
],

Note: If you are using Laravel 5.5, this step is unnecessary. Laravel Messenger supports Package Discovery.

Publish config:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Cmgmyr\Messenger\MessengerServiceProvider" --tag="config"

Update config file to reference your User Model:

config/messenger.php

Create a users table if you do not have one already. If you need one, the default Laravel migration will be satisfactory.

(Optional) Define names of database tables in package config file if you don't want to use default ones:

'messages_table' => 'messenger_messages',
'participants_table' => 'messenger_participants',
'threads_table' => 'messenger_threads',

Publish migrations:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Cmgmyr\Messenger\MessengerServiceProvider" --tag="migrations"

Migrate your database:

php artisan migrate

Add the trait to your user model:

use Cmgmyr\Messenger\Traits\Messagable;

class User extends Authenticatable {
    use Messagable;
}