Using the Booted Method Inside Traits in Laravel

A quick example¶

Let's say we're registering an Eloquent event listener on our model to generate a username for a user when they register. While there might be better ways to handle this globally, we'll stick with this example.

class User
{
    public static function booted()
    {
        static::creating(function (User $user) {
            // some code to generate a username
        });
    }
}

Imagine another model in your application that also needs the same functionality. Extract to a trait, right?

trait GeneratesUsernames
{
    public static function booted()
    {
        static::creating(function (User $user) {
            // some code to generate a username
        });
    }
}

Sure, but if we create a trait like this and apply it to two models, this will override the booted method, meaning that our trait effectively controls what happens inside booted.

We want to be able to 'merge' these together.

How to use booted inside traits¶

In reality, that's not what happens, but instead, we want both the booted method inside the trait to be invoked and the one in the Eloquent model we're using.

Instead, we'll specifically target the booted method with our trait name. Here's the complete code.

trait GeneratesUsernames
{
    public static function bootedGeneratesUsernames()
    {
        static::creating(function (User $user) {
            // some code to generate a username
        });
    }
}

class User
{
    use GeneratesUsernames;

    public static function booted()
    {
        // this still works!
    }
}

Notice the bootedGeneratesUsernames name of the method inside that trait. Laravel will now call both the booted method on the model and the bootedGeneratesUsernames method on the trait.

Basically, whatever the trait is named, append the name to the end of the booted method inside that trait.

Now, you're able to apply this trait to multiple models, even if they already contain a booted method, and everything will work as expected!