[](https://github.com/nodes-php/counter-cache/stargazers)
[](https://github.com/nodes-php/counter-cache/watchers)
[](https://github.com/nodes-php/counter-cache/network)
One thing we at [Nodes](http://nodesagency.com) have been missing in [Laravel](http://laravel.com/docs) is the concept of "counter caching".
Laravel comes "out of the box" with the [increment](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/queries#updates)/[decrement](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/queries#updates) methods on it's [Eloquent](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/eloquent) models. But you'll need to manually execute these methods everytime, you've saved/delete stuff with your model.
Since the [increment](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/queries#updates)/[decrement](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/queries#updates) methods always +1/-1, you can't 100% rely on these as cached value.
What if you forgot to execute the decrement method when you deleted a row. Or what if someone deleted a row directly from the database, then your count would be "out of sync".
Therefore we've created this package which brings "counter caching" to [Laravel](http://laravel.com/docs).
The difference between this package and Laravel's [increment](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/queries#updates)/[decrement](http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/queries#updates) is that our package actually generates and fires a SQL count statement, that counts the entries and updates the desired column with the result.
This way you're always 100% sure that the value in your "counter cache" column is correct.
## Installation
To install this package you will need:
* Laravel 5.1+
* PHP 5.5.9+
You must then modify your `composer.json` file and run `composer update` to include the latest version of the package in your project.
