---
title: "Cancel & expire — Requests for Laravel | Roundly"
description: "Cancel or expire requests on demand, stamp deadlines per request or globally, and expire stale ones on a schedule."
url: https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/requests-for-laravel/cancel-and-expire
language: en
---

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

# Cancel & expire

```php
Requests::cancel($request);   // status = Cancelled
Requests::expire($request);   // status = Expired
```

cancel() fires RequestStatusChanged and RequestCancelled; expire() fires RequestStatusChanged and RequestExpired.

Both also close the request’s open approval round, so a late decision can’t resolve it and pull the request back: through Requests it throws RequestAlreadyResolved, straight through the approvals engine ($alice->approve($request)) the engine’s ClosedApprovalRequestException. The round is closed through the engine’s own close: approvers still asked for a decision are released (ApprovalCancelled and ApprovalStatusChanged for each), then the round is closed as cancelled or expired and announced with ApprovalRequestResolved. A round already past its own expiry closes as expired. A cancelled request is final; an expired one can only be reopened — cancelling it throws RequestAlreadyResolved.

## Deadlines

Stamp an expiry on creation — per request with expiresAt(), or globally with default\_ttl. default\_ttl is a positive whole number of minutes (a numeric string from env() works too); not set (null or blank) means no default expiry, and anything else throws InvalidConfigurationException:

```php
// Per request:
Requests::make()->title('Leave request')->expiresAt(now()->addDays(7))->create();

// Globally — config/requests.php, in minutes (integer):
'default_ttl' => 60 * 24 * 14,   // 14 days unless expiresAt() is given
```

A deadline alone doesn’t change the status. Until requests:expire or expire() runs, a past-due request stays New, and isExpired() returns true — but it can no longer be decided: approve() or reject() expires it on the spot and throws RequestAlreadyResolved (Resolving requests). The approval round carries the same deadline, so the engine stops taking decisions at the same moment:

```php
$request->isExpired();   // true when still New and past expires_at
```

## Expiring from code

Requests::expireDue() expires every open, past-due request and returns how many this call expired. Each row is re-checked under its lock when its turn comes: one decided, cancelled, given a new deadline or expired by an overlapping sweep since its chunk was read is skipped and not counted, so overlapping sweeps announce each request once:

```php
use RoundlyConsulting\Requests\Facades\Requests;

Requests::expireDue();                // int — how many requests were expired
Requests::expireDue(dryRun: true);    // int — how many are due; nothing changes
Requests::expireDue(chunk: 1000);     // rows processed per batch
```

## Expiring on a schedule

The requests:expire command is a thin wrapper over Requests::expireDue() (see Artisan commands). Schedule it:

```php
// routes/console.php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schedule;

Schedule::command('requests:expire')->hourly();
```

Only open (New) requests past their expires\_at are expired, and their approval rounds are closed with them; approved and rejected requests are untouched. The command also lapses the approval decisions and rounds on requests whose own expiry has passed — scoped to the request model, so the rest of your app’s approvals are left to their own sweep. Requests::expireDue() expires requests only, so make that scoped call yourself when you sweep from code:

```php
use RoundlyConsulting\Approvals\Facades\Approvals;
use RoundlyConsulting\Requests\Facades\Requests;
use RoundlyConsulting\Requests\Models\Request;

Requests::expireDue();                            // expire past-due requests
Approvals::expire(subjectType: Request::class);   // lapse their decisions and rounds — requests only
```

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