Unable to use without database connection

[SuperDJ]

Wayfinder Version

0.1.4

Laravel Version

11.44

PHP Version

8.3

Description

I really like the idea of Wayfinder and can clearly see the advantages compared to other packages. But at the moment at least for me Wayfinder is unusable due to a required database connection. I prefer to not have an active database connection while developing. Also since I'm creating a multi-tenancy app with a database per tenant the connection is dynamic for quite a lot of models.

1. Would it be possible to use the model metadata that is similar to laravel-ide-helper instead of an actual database? Perhaps by setting a command flag or by using a config file you can switch between the two options;
2. Would it be possible to fail early when there is no database connection. Now it takes quite a bit of time before an exception is thrown;

For example

/**
 * Default User model
 * @property int $id
 */
class User

/**
 * Passport client
 * @property-read string $id uuid
 */
class Client 

/**
 * Post model
 * @property int $id
 * @property string $title
 * @property string $slug
 */
class Post extends Model
{
  public function getRouteKeyName(): string
 {
    return 'slug';
 }
}

Steps To Reproduce

[iyashpal-headred]

+1 for this

[Spice-King]

I'll chip in that I've run headlong into this with evaluation of migrating from Ziggy and it's injected blade code. The road block is in building in CI/CD, where the build steps intentionally don't have any credentials, never mind ones to the databases.

We have an unfortunate amount of legacy code in our Laravel app that has built up over the past ~8 years, as well as "external" tables from other apps we are consuming data from and thus don't "own". This has resulted in models backed by views, stored procedures and other shenanigans caused by our environment, or backed by tables but with no migrations, or ones who are partial, outdated or otherwise incomplete. Thus I can't exactly create several blank SQLite DBs and run migrations on them for Wayfinder to generate against. At least we are chipping at it and replacing the pain points we have for other reasons already.

[pindab0ter]

What is the current workaround for running Wayfinder in CI/CD when there is no access to a database?

[edenchazard]

Would also really appreciate a workaround 🙏 Wanted to replace ziggy with wayfinder as it looks to be great, but unfortunately this is blocking us.

[pindab0ter]

One possible workaround is to run a database in your CI/CD environment, run the migrations and then run Wayfinder. I have not tried this myself, but despite being slow, that should work.

[eberkund]

I solved the problem like this:

// vite.config.ts
import laravel from "laravel-vite-plugin";
import type { ViteUserConfig } from "vitest/config";
import { wayfinder } from "@laravel/vite-plugin-wayfinder";

function runWayfinder() {
    return !!process.env.RUN_WAYFINDER;
}

export default {
    plugins: [
        laravel({
            input: ["resources/sass/app.scss", "resources/js/app.ts"],
            refresh: true,
        }),
        runWayfinder() && wayfinder(),
    ]
} satisfies ViteUserConfig;

Now wayfinder will only run when the RUN_WAYFINDER variable is set.

[pindab0ter]

We adhere to the best practice of not committing any generated code to the VCS.

Preventing Wayfinder to run at all in CI/CD prevent types from being generated and could therefore cause type checks to fail.

So another possible workaround would be to commit the generated types to the VCS instead, and then prevent Wayfinder from running in CI/CD.

[edenchazard]

Our CI uses docker, we worked around it using a stage dedicated to wayfinder.

Create a base stage where you copy all your files, install npm and composer dependencies etc. Then:

FROM base AS wayfinder
ARG WAYFINDER_MIGRATIONS_FILE=/var/www/database/wayfinder-migrations.sqlite
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install sqlite3 -y
RUN sqlite3 ${WAYFINDER_MIGRATIONS_FILE}
ENV APP_ENV=local
ENV WAYFINDER_WORKAROUND=true
ENV DB_CONNECTION=sqlite
ENV DB_DATABASE=${WAYFINDER_MIGRATIONS_FILE}
ENV CACHE_DRIVER=file
RUN php artisan migrate
RUN php artisan wayfinder:generate

FROM base AS final
COPY --from=wayfinder /var/www/resources/js/wayfinder /var/www/resources/js/wayfinder
COPY --from=wayfinder /var/www/resources/js/routes /var/www/resources/js/routes
COPY --from=wayfinder /var/www/resources/js/actions /var/www/resources/js/actions
ENV WAYFINDER_WORKAROUND=true
RUN npm install --quiet && npm run build
ENV WAYFINDER_WORKAROUND=false

The wayfinder stage sets up the bare minimum env and migrations for wayfinder to work using an sqlite3 database.

In the final stage, we copy the files from the wayfinder stage into our actual build and then build via vite.

You'll want to modify your vite.config.ts slightly. Since the final stage doesn't have migrations at this point (at least in our use case), we have to prevent the wayfinder plugin from running. Cheers to @eberkund for the idea!

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [
    laravel({
      input: ["resources/css/app.css", "resources/js/app.ts"],
      refresh: true,
    }), 
    ...(function () {
      if (process.env.WAYFINDER_WORKAROUND === "true") {
        return [];
      }
      return [
        wayfinder(),
      ];
    })()
  ]
});

Caches such as redis might not work inside the wayfinder stage. You can put this just before the cache call (not ideal but good enough for our use):

if (env('WAYFINDER_WORKAROUND')) {
   return;
}

If you have a large number of migrations, you may want to consider squashing them.

[joetannenbaum]

In the upcoming Wayfinder (new) beta we will be reading in property annotations, sorry for the trouble here.