Laravel Artisan Watcher

A Laravel package that provides file watching functionality to automatically execute a CLI or Artisan command when files change. This is useful for automatically running tests, linting, or any other command when your files are modified during development.

Warning

Very early alpha — pure proof of concept.
Believe it or not, ~95% of this package’s code is AI-generated under 10 minutes with a single prompt!
For the full story, check out the PR.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require plakhin/laravel-artisan-watcher --dev

Usage

The package adds an artisan watch command that you can use to watch for file changes and trigger commands:

# Watch current directory and run tests when PHP files change
php artisan watch --command="php artisan test"

# Watch a specific directory for changes to JS files
php artisan watch app/Http --extensions=js --command="npm run lint"

# Watch with custom polling interval (in seconds)
php artisan watch --interval=2 --command="php artisan test"

# Exclude multiple directories
php artisan watch --exclude=vendor,node_modules,storage --command="php artisan test"

Available Options

• path: The directory to watch (default: current directory)
• --command: The command to run when files change (required)
• --interval: Polling interval in seconds (default: 1)
• --extensions: Comma-separated list of file extensions to watch (default: php)
• --exclude: Comma-separated list of directories to exclude (default: vendor,node_modules)

Example Use Cases

• Automatically run tests when files change:

  php artisan watch --command="php artisan test"

• Automatically compile assets when JavaScript or SCSS files change:

  php artisan watch resources --extensions=js,scss --command="npm run dev"

• Run type checking when PHP files change:

  php artisan watch --command="php artisan test:types"

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and are accepted via pull requests. Please review these guidelines before submitting any pull requests.

Process

1. Fork the project
2. Create a new branch
3. Code, test, commit and push
4. Open a pull request detailing your changes.

Guidelines

• Please ensure the coding style running composer lint.
• Please keep the codebase modernized using automated refactors with Rector composer refactor.
• Send a coherent commit history, making sure each individual commit in your pull request is meaningful.
• You may need to rebase to avoid merge conflicts.
• Please remember to follow SemVer.

Linting

composer lint

Refactoring with Rector

composer refactor

Testing

Run all tests:

composer test

Check code style:

composer test:lint

Check possible code improvements:

composer test:refactor

Check types:

composer test:types

Run Unit tests:

composer test:unit

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Credits

• Stanislav Plakhin
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.