Event Replay for Local Development

[somarkn99]

Problem
When working with events in Laravel (e.g. UserRegistered, OrderPlaced), developers often need to re-trigger them to test new listeners or debug behavior. Currently, this requires repeating the actual user flow (registering a new user, placing an order, etc.), which is time-consuming and can be frustrating during local development.

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Proposed Solution
Introduce a local-only Event Replay system.

• Laravel could optionally record dispatched events (class name + payload) in a lightweight store (e.g. JSON log in storage/ or a simple database table).
• A new Artisan command would allow developers to replay these events:

php artisan event:replay App\\Events\\UserRegistered --since=1h
php artisan event:replay App\\Events\\OrderPlaced --id=123

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Benefits

1. Faster debugging and development of event-driven applications.
2. No need to manually repeat business flows just to re-fire events.
3. Works seamlessly with existing event/listener architecture.
4. Can be opt-in (config('event_replay.enabled')) and enabled only for local environment.

This would make Laravel development more productive, especially for event-heavy applications

[HusseinAhmed2018]

You can actually implement this idea today in Laravel without waiting for a core feature, using a lightweight local-only setup. Here's a clean approach that gives you the same benefits you're proposing:

✅ 1) Log dispatched events only in the local environment

In your EventServiceProvider (or a dedicate service provider), you can listen to all events and store them in a JSON log:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\App;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Event;

public function boot()
{
    if (App::environment('local')) {
        Event::listen('*', function ($eventName, $payload) {
            Storage::append('events.log', json_encode([
                'event' => $eventName,
                'payload' => $payload,
                'timestamp' => now(),
            ]));
        });
    }
}

This avoids any overhead in production