Mastering Laravel Model Events & Lifecycle Hooks

Laravel’s Eloquent ORM offers a powerful feature set to hook into a model’s lifecycle using events like creating, updating, deleting, and more. Understanding and using these events
helps you write cleaner, more maintainable code while keeping business logic organized within the model itself.

Lifecycle Hooks: boot() vs booted()

boot()

This static method is triggered early when the model is initializing. It’s commonly used to register model events or apply global scopes.

protected static function boot()
{
    parent::boot();

    static::creating(function ($model) {
        // Set default values
    });
}

booted()

This method is executed after the model has been fully booted. It’s ideal for clean separation of concerns when
registering model events.

protected static function booted()
{
    static::created(function ($model) {
        // Log or notify
    });
}

Eloquent Model Events

Here’s a list of all available model events and when they are triggered:

Event	When it fires	Common Use
retrieved	After fetching from DB	Log or audit access
creating	Before insert	Set defaults, validate
created	After insert	Send welcome email
updating	Before update	Audit or validate change
updated	After update	Log changes
saving	Before insert or update	Universal validator
saved	After insert or update	Clear cache
deleting	Before delete	Cascade deletes
deleted	After delete	Log or notify
restoring	Before soft-delete restore	Authorization checks
restored	After restore	Reinitialize state

Preventing Operations Using Events

You can cancel specific operations (like preventing delete) by returning false from an event handler:

static::deleting(function ($model) {
    if ($model->is_locked) {
        return false;
    }
});

This works with creating, updating, deleting, and restoring.

Full Event Template for Your Model

Here’s a practical event registration setup to use inside your Eloquent model:

protected static function booted()
{
    static::creating(function ($model) {
        //
    });

    static::created(function ($model) {
        //
    });

    static::updating(function ($model) {
        //
    });

    static::updated(function ($model) {
        //
    });

    static::deleting(function ($model) {
        //
    });

    static::deleted(function ($model) {
        //
    });

    static::restoring(function ($model) {
        //
    });

    static::restored(function ($model) {
        //
    });
}

Final Thoughts

Model events are an elegant way to organize business logic around your data. Use them to keep your controllers and services clean, and maintain consistent behavior across your application. Whether you’re auto-generating slugs, sending emails, or enforcing security, Laravel’s model events are your go-to tool.