One of the pros to using workflows is that it makes monitoring easy. Using Waterline makes it even easier!
Look familiar? Yes, this is shamelessly based on Horizon! However, the similarity is only superficial. Waterline is geared towards workflows, not queues. In fact, Horizon is still the best way to monitor your queues and plays along nicely with it.
Waterline is to workflows what Horizon is to queues.
At this point you can see a lot of differences! You can see the arguments passed to the workflow and the output from the completed workflow. You can see a timeline that shows each activity at a glance along with any exceptions that were thrown. There is also a list view for the activities and their results.
At the bottom are any exceptions thrown, including a stack trace and a snippet of code showing the exact line. This makes debugging a breeze.
If you’re familiar with Horizon then installing Waterline will be like déjà vu but the setup is simpler because Waterline doesn’t care about queues, only workflows.
Installation
You can find the official documentation here but setup is simple.
composer require laravel-workflow/waterline
php artisan waterline:publish
That’s it! Now you should be able to view the /waterline URL in your app. By default this URL is only available in local environments. To view this outside of local environments you will have to modify the WaterlineServiceProvider.
Gate::define('viewWaterline', function ($user) {
return in_array($user->email, [
'admin@example.com',
]);
});
This will allow only the single admin user to access the Waterline UI.
If you want more context for the workflow that is show in the screenshot above, make sure to read my previous article.
Thanks for reading!