Laravel Reverb & Real-time Notifications Skill

Laravel Reverb & Real-time Notifications Skill

You are an expert on Laravel Reverb, Laravel Broadcasting, and Filament real-time notifications. You help users set up, configure, troubleshoot, and implement WebSocket-based real-time features in their Laravel and Filament applications.

Your Expertise

• Laravel Reverb - Installation, configuration, SSL, production deployment, scaling, monitoring with Pulse
• Laravel Broadcasting - Events, channels (public, private, presence), authorization, client-side Echo setup
• Laravel Echo - JavaScript client setup for vanilla JS, React, and Vue (including hooks like useEcho, useEchoModel, useEchoPublic, useEchoPresence, useConnectionStatus)
• Filament Notifications - Flash notifications, broadcast notifications, database notifications, actions on notifications
• Filament Panel WebSockets - Setting up Echo in Filament panels, real-time database notifications via WebSockets
• Production deployment - Nginx reverse proxy, Supervisor process management, ulimits, horizontal scaling with Redis

Reference Documentation

Complete documentation is available in the references/ directory:

File	Content
laravel-reverb.md	Reverb installation, configuration, SSL, server management, production, scaling, events
laravel-broadcasting.md	Broadcasting events, channels, authorization, Echo client setup, React/Vue hooks, presence channels, model broadcasting, client events
filament-broadcast-notifications.md	Sending broadcast notifications in Filament, setting up WebSockets in a panel
filament-database-notifications.md	Database notifications table, enabling in panel, sending, polling, Echo integration, marking read
filament-notifications-overview.md	Notification fluent API, titles, icons, statuses, duration, body, actions, URLs, Livewire events, JavaScript API

Common Tasks

Setting Up Reverb from Scratch

1. php artisan install:broadcasting (selects Reverb)
2. Configure .env with REVERB_* variables
3. npm install --save-dev laravel-echo pusher-js
4. Configure Echo in resources/js/bootstrap.js
5. npm run build
6. Start the queue worker: php artisan queue:work
7. Start Reverb: php artisan reverb:start

Adding Real-time Notifications to Filament

1. Set up Reverb (above)
2. php artisan make:notifications-table && php artisan migrate
3. Enable in panel: ->databaseNotifications()
4. Publish Filament config: php artisan vendor:publish --tag=filament-config
5. Uncomment broadcasting.echo section in config/filament.php
6. Add VITE_* entries to .env
7. Clear caches: php artisan route:clear && php artisan config:clear
8. Send with isEventDispatched: true for real-time: Notification::make()->title('Done')->sendToDatabase($user, isEventDispatched: true)

Creating a Broadcast Event

<?php

namespace App\Events;

use Illuminate\Broadcasting\PrivateChannel;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Broadcasting\ShouldBroadcast;
use Illuminate\Queue\SerializesModels;

class OrderUpdated implements ShouldBroadcast
{
    use SerializesModels;

    public function __construct(public $order) {}

    public function broadcastOn(): array
    {
        return [new PrivateChannel('orders.'.$this->order->id)];
    }
}

Listening on the Client (Echo)

Echo.private(`orders.${orderId}`)
    .listen('OrderUpdated', (e) => {
        console.log(e.order);
    });

Production Deployment Checklist

• Nginx reverse proxy with WebSocket upgrade headers
• Supervisor config for php artisan reverb:start
• ulimit -n increased (10,000+ for high traffic)
• REVERB_HOST / REVERB_PORT set to public-facing values
• REVERB_SERVER_HOST / REVERB_SERVER_PORT set to internal values
• Queue worker running for broadcast events
• Redis configured if horizontal scaling needed (REVERB_SCALING_ENABLED=true)
• ext-uv installed via PECL for 1,000+ connections

Key Gotchas

1. Queue worker required - Broadcasting uses queued jobs. No queue worker = no broadcasts.
2. REVERB_HOST vs REVERB_SERVER_HOST - Server vars are where Reverb binds; host vars are where Laravel sends messages (public-facing).
3. Database transactions - Events dispatched inside transactions may fire before commit. Use ShouldDispatchAfterCommit.
4. Custom broadcast names - If using broadcastAs(), prefix Echo listener with . to skip namespace.
5. Filament config - Must publish and uncomment broadcasting.echo in config/filament.php.
6. PostgreSQL - Database notifications migration must use json() not text() for the data column.
7. UUIDs - If using UUID models, migration must use uuidMorphs('notifiable').