Yes, it is possible to use Laravel Pennant with Laravel Spark for feature flagging in a SaaS application. Here's a detailed explanation:
**Laravel Pennant Overview
Laravel Pennant is a first-party, lightweight feature flag package designed for Laravel applications. It allows you to incrementally roll out new features, perform A/B testing, and manage feature access with minimal setup. Pennant supports storing feature flag values in a database or in-memory array and allows scoping flags to users, teams, or other models, which is essential for SaaS applications with multi-tenant or subscription-based features[1][3][5][7].
**Laravel Spark Overview
Laravel Spark is a SaaS starter kit for Laravel that provides subscription billing, team management, and other SaaS-specific features out of the box. It handles user subscriptions, trials, and billing integration, which are common concerns in SaaS applications[4].
**Integration Feasibility
- Since Laravel Pennant supports scoping feature flags to Eloquent models such as users or teams, you can leverage Spark's user and subscription models to enable or disable features based on subscription status, trial period, or team membership.
- Pennant allows defining custom logic for when a feature is active, so you can create feature definitions that check if a user is on trial, has a certain subscription plan, or belongs to a specific team managed by Spark[1][2]. For example, you might enable a feature only for users currently in a trial period or on a premium plan.
- Pennant's database-backed storage and ability to scope flags to models fit well with Spark's database-driven subscription and team management system, allowing persistent and granular control over feature availability.
- You can extend Pennant with custom drivers or implement the `FeatureScopeable` contract on Spark's user or team models to customize how feature flags are resolved and stored[1].
**Practical Use Cases
- Enable experimental features only for Spark users who are on trial, and automatically disable them when the trial ends.
- Roll out new features gradually to paying customers or specific subscription tiers.
- Use feature flags to gate access to new billing or team management functionalities provided by Spark.
- Perform A/B testing on UI components or workflows for different user segments managed by Spark, storing flag states in the session or database via Pennant[2][8].
**Implementation Steps
1. Install Laravel Pennant in your Laravel Spark application using Composer.
2. Publish Pennant's configuration and migration files, then run migrations to create the features table.
3. Define your feature flags in Pennant, using closures or classes that check Spark user subscription or trial status to determine if a feature is active.
4. Use Pennant's `Feature::active('feature-name', $user)` method in your application code, middleware, or views to conditionally enable features.
5. Optionally, implement the `FeatureScopeable` interface on Spark's user or team models to customize feature flag scoping.
6. Manage feature flags dynamically via database or custom drivers as needed.
In summary, Laravel Pennant's flexibility and model scoping capabilities make it well-suited to integrate with Laravel Spark for feature flagging in SaaS applications. This combination allows you to control feature availability based on subscription plans, trials, and team memberships, enabling safe and incremental feature rollouts tailored to your SaaS business logic[1][2][7].
Citations:
[1] https://laravel.com/docs/11.x/pennant
[2] https://github.com/laravel/pennant/issues/52
[3] https://laravel-news.com/feature-flags-with-laravel-pennant
[4] https://spark.laravel.com/docs/spark-stripe/upgrade
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjLAaeHSPWY
[6] https://www.binarcode.com/blog/feature-flaggin-laravel
[7] https://www.honeybadger.io/blog/a-guide-to-feature-flags-in-laravel/
[8] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77751003/laravel-pennant-store-against-session-for-a-b-testing
[9] https://posthog.com/tutorials/laravel-feature-flags
[10] https://dev.to/saurabh-dhariwal/how-to-manage-feature-flags-with-laravel-pennant-in-2024-1phb