Laravel Events and Listeners

Events Decouple Your Code

"Something happened" → "Do these things"

Creating Events

php artisan make:event OrderPlaced
php artisan make:listener SendOrderConfirmation --event=OrderPlaced

// Events/OrderPlaced.php
class OrderPlaced
{
    public function __construct(
        public Order $order
    ) {}
}

Creating Listeners

// Listeners/SendOrderConfirmation.php
class SendOrderConfirmation
{
    public function handle(OrderPlaced $event): void
    {
        Mail::to($event->order->user)->send(
            new OrderConfirmationMail($event->order)
        );
    }
}

Registering

// EventServiceProvider
protected $listen = [
    OrderPlaced::class => [
        SendOrderConfirmation::class,
        UpdateInventory::class,
        NotifyWarehouse::class,
    ],
];

Dispatching

// Anywhere in your code
event(new OrderPlaced($order));

// Or
OrderPlaced::dispatch($order);

Queued Listeners

For heavy work:

class SendOrderConfirmation implements ShouldQueue
{
    public function handle(OrderPlaced $event): void
    {
        // Runs in background
    }
}

Event Subscribers

Group related listeners:

class OrderEventSubscriber
{
    public function handleOrderPlaced(OrderPlaced $event) {}
    public function handleOrderShipped(OrderShipped $event) {}

    public function subscribe(Dispatcher $events): array
    {
        return [
            OrderPlaced::class => 'handleOrderPlaced',
            OrderShipped::class => 'handleOrderShipped',
        ];
    }
}

When to Use Events

• Multiple things happen after one action
• You want to decouple modules
• Background processing needed
• Audit logging