laravel-activitylog is a free, MIT-licensed PHP package from Spatie that records user and model activity inside a Laravel application in a single database table, aimed at Laravel developers and teams that need an auditable trail of who changed what.

What it is

The package is spatie/laravel-activitylog, published on Packagist and installed through Composer. It "provides easy to use functions to log the activities of the users of your app", and it can "also automatically log model events". Everything it captures is written to the activity_log table and read back through the Spatie\Activitylog\Models\Activity model. The package automatically registers itself, so a Laravel application gains the model, the helper functions and the storage layer without manual wiring. Documentation lives at https://docs.spatie.be/laravel-activitylog, and the package carries the topics audit, laravel, log, monitoring and php, placing it in the Business Software / Compliance & Risk Management category of this registry.

The concrete problem it solves is the audit trail a Laravel application would otherwise have to build by hand. Without it, a team writes its own log table, its own migration, its own model and its own hooks into Eloquent save events for every model that matters. This package supplies all of that: a published migration that creates activity_log, a model to query it, a fluent helper for manual entries, and automatic capture of model events. When a model is saved after a change, the package records the activity, and the record keeps a reference to the subject that changed along with the causer responsible for it.

Key capabilities

• Manual logging through the activity() helper, as in activity()->log('Look, I logged something').
• Fluent context on each entry via performedOn($anEloquentModel), causedBy($user) and withProperties(['customProperty' => 'customValue']).
• Automatic model event logging: changing and saving a model causes an activity to be written, with a description such as 'updated'.
• Retrieval and inspection through the Activity model, where subject returns the Eloquent model instance, causer returns the user model, getProperty('customProperty') returns the custom value, and description returns the logged text.
• Change tracking through attribute_changes, which returns a collection containing attributes and old arrays so previous and current values can be compared.
• A published migration tagged activitylog-migrations that creates the activity_log table.
• An optional publishable config file, exposed through the same Spatie\Activitylog\ActivitylogServiceProvider provider.

Who uses it and how

• Laravel teams that need an audit record of user actions, matching the audit and monitoring topics on the repository.
• Applications that must show which user changed which record, using causedBy($user) together with performedOn($model).
• Projects tracking field-level history, reading attribute_changes to compare old values against new ones.
• Teams using UUID primary keys, which must first adjust the format of the subject_id and causer_id fields in the published migration before running it.
• Developers debugging model writes, relying on automatic event logging rather than adding logging calls to each save path.

Getting started

Install with composer require spatie/laravel-activitylog, publish the migration using php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Spatie\Activitylog\ActivitylogServiceProvider" --tag="activitylog-migrations", then create the table with php artisan migrate. The config file can optionally be published through the same provider.

How it compares

No list of paid products that this package replaces is supplied, and no comparable tools are named in the facts. On the evidence available here, it stands alone in this registry.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must operate the database that holds the activity_log table, publish and run the migration, and keep that table in step with application models. It is not a fit for applications outside the Laravel and PHP stack, since the helpers and the Eloquent model event hooks are framework-specific. The facts describe no user interface, no retention or pruning policy and no hosted option, so teams expecting a ready-made audit dashboard or a managed service should look elsewhere.

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activity()->log('Look, I logged something');

Activity::all();

activity()
   ->performedOn($anEloquentModel)
   ->causedBy($user)
   ->withProperties(['customProperty' => 'customValue'])
   ->log('Look, I logged something');

$lastLoggedActivity = Activity::all()->last();

$lastLoggedActivity->subject; //returns an instance of an eloquent model
$lastLoggedActivity->causer; //returns an instance of your user model
$lastLoggedActivity->getProperty('customProperty'); //returns 'customValue'
$lastLoggedActivity->description; //returns 'Look, I logged something'

$newsItem->name = 'updated name';
$newsItem->save();

//updating the newsItem will cause the logging of an activity
$activity = Activity::all()->last();

$activity->description; //returns 'updated'
$activity->subject; //returns the instance of NewsItem that was saved

[
   'attributes' => [
        'name' => 'updated name',
        'text' => 'Lorem',
    ],
    'old' => [
        'name' => 'original name',
        'text' => 'Lorem',
    ],
];

composer require spatie/laravel-activitylog

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Spatie\Activitylog\ActivitylogServiceProvider" --tag="activitylog-migrations"

php artisan migrate

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Spatie\Activitylog\ActivitylogServiceProvider" --tag="activitylog-config"

composer test