Events

Idempotent no-ops — liking what’s already liked, unliking what isn’t — dispatch no events. On a real change the package fires exactly one event:

use RoundlyConsulting\Likes\Events\Liked;

class NotifyAuthor
{
    public function handle(Liked $event): void
    {
        // $event->actor, $event->likeable, $event->type, $event->like
    }
}

• A switch via react() fires only ReactionChanged — never Liked or Unliked. When react() collapses several reactions into one, it also fires Unliked for each extra reaction it removes.
• Concurrent requests can’t double-fire: only the request that actually changed a row dispatches its event.
• Bulk likeMany() / unlikeMany() fire one event per item that actually changed.

Registering listeners

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Event;
use RoundlyConsulting\Likes\Events\Liked;
use RoundlyConsulting\Likes\Events\ReactionChanged;

// e.g. in AppServiceProvider::boot()
Event::listen(Liked::class, NotifyAuthor::class);

Event::listen(function (ReactionChanged $event): void {
    // $event->from, $event->to — a clean transition, never an unlike + like
});

The events use SerializesModels, so queued listeners work as usual.

Optional: a persisted counter column

The package never adds columns to your own tables. For O(1) counts use withLikesCount() / loadCount('likes'), or maintain your own counter column with a small listener — for example a likes_count column on the likeable:

use RoundlyConsulting\Likes\Events\Liked;
use RoundlyConsulting\Likes\Events\Unliked;

class SyncLikesCounter
{
    public function increment(Liked $event): void
    {
        $event->likeable->increment('likes_count');
    }

    public function decrement(Unliked $event): void
    {
        $event->likeable->decrement('likes_count');
    }
}

Event::listen(Liked::class, [SyncLikesCounter::class, 'increment']);
Event::listen(Unliked::class, [SyncLikesCounter::class, 'decrement']);

Register it yourself — the package does not auto-register it. A reaction switch fires neither Liked nor Unliked, and a react() that collapses several reactions fires Unliked for each one it removes, so the counter stays correct.