---
title: "History & audit trail — Attributes for Laravel | Roundly"
description: "Opt in to an old→new revision on every attach, update, meta change and detach, then read it per model or per attribute, newest first."
url: https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/attributes-for-laravel/history
language: en
---

[All packages](https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source.md)

[Attributes for Laravel](https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/attributes-for-laravel.md)

# History & audit trail

Enable attributes.history.enabled to record an old→new revision whenever an attribute is attached, updated — value or meta — or detached. It is off by default — no revision rows are written until you opt in:

```bash
ATTRIBUTES_HISTORY=true
```

```php
use RoundlyConsulting\Attributes\Facades\Attributes;

Attributes::for($product)->history();        // Collection<AttributeRevision> — newest first
Attributes::for($product)->history('color'); // filtered by attribute name

$product->history('color');   // model shorthand
$product->attributeHistory(); // the underlying MorphMany relation
```

## What a revision holds

| Column | Holds |
| --- | --- |
| `type` | RevisionType — attached, updated or detached. |
| `name` | The attribute name. |
| `old_value, new_value` | Storage strings before and after — ciphertext for encrypted attributes. |
| `old_value_type, new_value_type` | AttributeType values before and after. |
| `old_meta, new_meta` | Metadata before and after, cast to Collections. |
| `owner_type, owner_id` | The owning model (owner() morph-to relation). |
| `created_at` | When the change happened. |

```php
use RoundlyConsulting\Attributes\Enums\RevisionType;

foreach ($product->history('color') as $revision) {
    $revision->type;            // RevisionType::Attached | Updated | Detached
    $revision->old_value;       // previous storage string, or null
    $revision->new_value;       // new storage string, or null on detach
    $revision->old_value_type;  // 'string', 'integer', ...
    $revision->new_value_type;
    $revision->old_meta;        // Collection|null
    $revision->new_meta;
    $revision->created_at;

    $revision->type->is(RevisionType::Updated); // bool
}

$product->attributeHistory('color')->limit(10)->get(); // a relation — query it freely
```

## What is recorded

- attached — the first write of a name through any writer, meta() included, and re-attaching a detached name.
- updated — writing a value or meta to a name that is attached, including values re-sent by a sync.
- detached — every removal of an attached name: forget(), forgetExcept() and the extras sync() drops, plus their model methods — and a permanent delete of the owner.

## Pruning revisions

attributes:prune only touches attributes — pruning the revisions table is left to your application, for example with a scheduled query:

```php
// routes/console.php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schedule;
use RoundlyConsulting\Attributes\Models\AttributeRevision;

Schedule::call(function (): void {
    AttributeRevision::query()
        ->where('created_at', '<', now()->subYear())
        ->forceDelete();
})->weekly();
```

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