Laravel Cashier provides an expressive, fluent interface to Stripe's subscription billing services. It handles almost all of the boilerplate subscription billing code you are dreading writing. In addition to basic subscription management, Cashier can handle coupons, swapping subscription, subscription "quantities", cancellation grace periods, and even generate invoice PDFs.
First, add the Cashier package to your composer.json file and run the composer update command:
"laravel/cashier": "~6.0"
Next, register the Laravel\Cashier\CashierServiceProvider service provider in your app configuration file.
Before using Cashier, we'll need to prepare the database. We need to add several columns to your users table and create a new subscriptions table to hold all of our customer's subscriptions:
Schema::table('users', function ($table) {
$table->string('stripe_id')->nullable();
$table->string('card_brand')->nullable();
$table->string('card_last_four')->nullable();
});
Schema::create('subscriptions', function ($table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->integer('user_id');
$table->string('name');
$table->string('stripe_id');
$table->string('stripe_plan');
$table->integer('quantity');
$table->timestamp('trial_ends_at')->nullable();
$table->timestamp('ends_at')->nullable();
$table->timestamps();
});
Once the migrations have been created, simply run the migrate command.
Next, add the Billable trait to your model definition:
use Laravel\Cashier\Billable;
class User extends Authenticatable
{
use Billable;
}
Finally, set your Stripe key in your services.php configuration file:
'stripe' => [
'model' => App\User::class,
'secret' => env('STRIPE_API_SECRET'),
],
To create a subscription, first retrieve an instance of your billable model, which typically will be an instance of App\User. Once you have retrieved the model instance, you may use the newSubscription method to create the model's subscription:
$user = User::find(1);
$user->newSubscription('main', 'monthly')->create($creditCardToken);
The first argument passed to the newSubscription method should be the name of the subscription. If your application only offers a single subscription, you might call this main or primary. The second argument is the specific Stripe plan the user is subscribing to. This value should correspond to the plan's identifier in Stripe.
The create method will automatically create the Stripe subscription, as well as update your database with Stripe customer ID and other relevant billing information. If your plan has a trial configured in Stripe, the trial end date will also automatically be set on the user record.
If you would like to specify additional customer details, you may do so by passing them as the second argument to the create method:
$user->newSubscription('main', 'monthly')->create($creditCardToken, [
'email' => $email, 'description' => 'Our First Customer'
]);
To learn more about the additional fields supported by Stripe, check out Stripe's documentation on customer creation.
If you would like to apply a coupon when creating the subscription, you may use the withCoupon method:
$user->newSubscription('main', 'monthly')
->withCoupon('code')
->create($creditCardToken);
Once a user is subscribed to your application, you may easily check their subscription status using a variety of convenient methods. First, the subscribed method returns true if the user has an active subscription, even if the subscription is currently within its trial period:
if ($user->subscribed('main')) {
//
}
The subscribed method also makes a great candidate for a route middleware, allowing you to filter access to routes and controllers based on the user's subscription status:
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
if ($request->user() && ! $request->user()->subscribed('main')) {
// This user is not a paying customer...
return redirect('billing');
}
return $next($request);
}
If you would like to determine if a user is still within their trial period, you may use the onTrial method. This method can be useful for displaying a warning to the user that they are still on their trial period:
if ($user->subscription('main')->onTrial()) {
//
}
The onPlan method may be used to determine if the user is subscribed to a given plan based on its Stripe ID:
if ($user->onPlan('monthly')) {
//
}
To determine if the user was once an active subscriber, but has cancelled their subscription, you may use the cancelled method:
if ($user->subscription('main')->cancelled()) {
//
}
You may also determine if a user has cancelled their subscription, but are still on their "grace period" until the subscription fully expires. For example, if a user cancels a subscription on March 5th that was originally scheduled to expire on March 10th, the user is on their "grace period" until March 10th. Note that the subscribed method still returns true during this time.
if ($user->subscription('main')->onGracePeriod()) {
//
}
After a user is subscribed to your application, they may occasionally want to change to a new subscription plan. To swap a user to a new subscription, use the swap method. For example, we may easily switch a user to the premium subscription:
$user = App\User::find(1);
$user->subscription('main')->swap('stripe-plan-id');
If the user is on trial, the trial period will be maintained. Also, if a "quantity" exists for the subscription, that quantity will also be maintained. If you would like to invoice the customer immediately after swapping plans, use the invoice method:
$user->subscription('main')->swap('stripe-plan-id');
$user->invoice();
Sometimes subscriptions are affected by "quantity". For example, your application might charge $10 per month per user on an account. To easily increment or decrement your subscription quantity, use the incrementQuantity and decrementQuantity methods:
$user = User::find(1);
$user->subscription('main')->incrementQuantity();
// Add five to the subscription's current quantity...
$user->subscription('main')->incrementQuantity(5);
$user->subscription('main')->decrementQuantity();
// Subtract five to the subscription's current quantity...
$user->subscription('main')->decrementQuantity(5);
Alternatively, you may set a specific quantity using the updateQuantity method:
$user->subscription('main')->updateQuantity(10);
For more information on subscription quantities, consult the Stripe documentation.
With Cashier, it's easy to provide the tax_percent value sent to Stripe. To specify the tax percentage a user pays on a subscription, implement the taxPercentage method on your billable model, and return a numeric value between 0 and 100, with no more than 2 decimal places.
public function taxPercentage() {
return 20;
}
This enables you to apply a tax rate on a model-by-model basis, which may be helpful for a user base that spans multiple countries.
To cancel a subscription, simply call the cancel method on the user's subscription:
$user->subscription('main')->cancel();
When a subscription is cancelled, Cashier will automatically set the ends_at column in your database. This column is used to know when the subscribed method should begin returning false. For example, if a customer cancels a subscription on March 1st, but the subscription was not scheduled to end until March 5th, the subscribed method will continue to return true until March 5th.
You may determine if a user has cancelled their subscription but are still on their "grace period" using the onGracePeriod method:
if ($user->subscription('main')->onGracePeriod()) {
//
}
If a user has cancelled their subscription and you wish to resume it, use the resume method. The user must still be on their grace period in order to resume a subscription:
$user->subscription('main')->resume();
If the user cancels a subscription and then resumes that subscription before the subscription has fully expired, they will not be billed immediately. Instead, their subscription will simply be re-activated, and they will be billed on the original billing cycle.
What if a customer's credit card expires? No worries - Cashier includes a Webhook controller that can easily cancel the customer's subscription for you. Just point a route to the controller:
Route::post(
'stripe/webhook',
'\Laravel\Cashier\Http\Controllers\WebhookController@handleWebhook'
);
That's it! Failed payments will be captured and handled by the controller. The controller will cancel the customer's subscription when Stripe determines the subscription has failed (normally after three failed payment attempts). Don't forget: you will need to configure the webhook URI in your Stripe control panel settings.
Since Stripe webhooks need to bypass Laravel's CSRF verification, be sure to list the URI as an exception in your VerifyCsrfToken middleware:
protected $except = [
'stripe/*',
];
If you have additional Stripe webhook events you would like to handle, simply extend the Webhook controller. Your method names should correspond to Cashier's expected convention, specifically, methods should be prefixed with handle and the "camel case" name of the Stripe webhook you wish to handle. For example, if you wish to handle the invoice.payment_succeeded webhook, you should add a handleInvoicePaymentSucceeded method to the controller.
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Laravel\Cashier\Http\Controllers\WebhookController as BaseController;
class WebhookController extends BaseController
{
/**
* Handle a stripe webhook.
*
* @param array $payload
* @return Response
*/
public function handleInvoicePaymentSucceeded($payload)
{
// Handle The Event
}
}
If you would like to make a "one off" charge against a subscribed customer's credit card, you may use the charge method on a billable model instance. The charge method accepts the amount you would like to charge in the lowest denominator of the currency used by your application. So, for example, the example below will charge 100 cents, or $1.00, against the user's credit card:
$user->charge(100);
The charge method accepts an array as its second argument, allowing you to pass any options you wish to the underlying Stripe charge creation:
$user->charge(100, [
'source' => $token,
'receipt_email' => $user->email,
]);
The charge method will return false if the charge fails. This typically indicates the charge was denied:
if ( ! $user->charge(100)) {
// The charge was denied...
}
If the charge is successful, the full Stripe response will be returned from the method.
You may easily retrieve an array of a billable model's invoices using the invoices method:
$invoices = $user->invoices();
When listing the invoices for the customer, you may use the invoice's helper methods to display the relevant invoice information. For example, you may wish to list every invoice in a table, allowing the user to easily download any of them:
<table>
@foreach ($invoices as $invoice)
<tr>
<td>{{ $invoice->date()->toFormattedDateString() }}</td>
<td>{{ $invoice->total() }}</td>
<td><a href="/user/invoice/{{ $invoice->id }}">Download</a></td>
</tr>
@endforeach
</table>
Before generating invoice PDFs, you need to install the dompdf PHP library:
composer require dompdf/dompdf
From within a route or controller, use the downloadInvoice method to generate a PDF download of the invoice. This method will automatically generate the proper HTTP response to send the download to the browser:
Route::get('user/invoice/{invoice}', function ($invoiceId) {
return Auth::user()->downloadInvoice($invoiceId, [
'vendor' => 'Your Company',
'product' => 'Your Product',
]);
});