Using Stripe-like, human-readable IDs in Laravel Models and Migrations

Laravel Stripe-like IDs.md

Using Stripe-like, human-readable IDs in Laravel Models and Migrations. This will fully use Stripe-like IDs (like "usr_123123123" or "team_123123123") instead of auto-incrementing IDs or UUIDs in your models.

1. In your migrations, change $table->id(); to $table->string('id')->primary();
2. Add the new HasHashIds trait to app/Traits/HasHashIds.php

<?php

namespace App\Traits;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Concerns\HasUniqueStringIds;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;

trait HasHashIds
{
    use HasUniqueStringIds;

    /**
     * Generate a new unique key for the model.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function newUniqueId()
    {
        return (string) $this->hashPrefix . Str::ulid();
    }

    /**
     * Determine if given key is valid.
     *
     * @param  mixed  $value
     * @return bool
     */
    protected function isValidUniqueId($value): bool
    {
        return Str::startsWith($value, $this->hashPrefix);
    }
}

3. In your model classes, use the trait and define a descriptive hash prefix to use (like "usr_", "team_" or "project_"):

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use App\Traits\HasHashIds;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;



class Project extends Model
{
    /** @use HasFactory<\Database\Factories\ProjectFactory> */
    use HasFactory;
    
    use HasHashIds;
    protected $hashPrefix = 'proj_';
}

4. Using foreignIdFor in your migrations will not work anymore since it only supports UUID and integer IDs. To reference tables, you will instead need to define a custom macro. For this, create a provider DatabaseServiceProvider (or whatever you want to call it) and add this content:

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

class DatabaseServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * Register services.
     */
    public function register(): void
    {
        //
    }

    /**
     * Bootstrap services.
     */
    public function boot(): void
    {
        Blueprint::macro('foreignHashIdFor', function ($model, $column = null, $length = null) {
            $instance = new $model;
            $column = $column ?: $instance->getForeignKey();
            $length = $length ?: 255;
            
            $this->string($column, $length);
            
            return $this->foreign($column)
                ->references($instance->getKeyName())
                ->on($instance->getTable());
        });
    }
}

This creates a new function foreignHashIdFor that you can call with the model class, exactly like foreignIdFor.