Concepts

Request

RoundlyConsulting\Requests\Models\Request is the claim or application. It has a polymorphic author, a Status enum, free-form meta, a require_approvals_from record of the declared approvers’ keys and an optional expires_at. It is soft-deletable:

$request->status;                  // Status enum — New, Approved, Rejected, Cancelled, Expired
$request->author;                  // polymorphic author (MorphTo), nullable
$request->type;                    // e.g. 'Claim'
$request->title;                   // e.g. 'Expense reimbursement'
$request->description;
$request->meta;                    // Collection — free-form metadata
$request->require_approvals_from;  // Collection — the declared approvers’ keys
$request->expires_at;              // ?Carbon — the expiry deadline

$request->delete();                // soft delete (deleted_at)

Status

RoundlyConsulting\Requests\Enums\Status is a string-backed enum with five cases. It carries isOpen(), isTerminal() and canTransitionTo(), plus the shared enum helpers from enums-for-laravel (see Status & transitions):

use RoundlyConsulting\Requests\Enums\Status;

Status::New;        // open — awaiting a decision
Status::Approved;
Status::Rejected;
Status::Cancelled;
Status::Expired;

The approval engine

A Request is an approvals subject — it uses the engine’s RequiresApproval trait. Declaring approvers (or stages, or a workflow preset) opens an approval round — an ApprovalRequest in the engine — that names those approvers: only they, or someone they delegated to, may decide it. Its rule decides when the bar is met. A listener, SyncRequestStatusFromApproval, mirrors every engine resolution back onto the request’s Status, so the outcome moves the request and fires the requests events no matter how the decision arrived.

Database schema

The requests table the published migration creates: