Building Multi-Tenant Applications (SaaS Apps with Laravel)

1. Introduction to Multi-Tenant Applications

Multi-tenancy allows a single Laravel application to serve multiple customers (tenants) with data isolation. This is commonly used in SaaS applications.

2. Approaches to Multi-Tenancy in Laravel

• Single Database, Tenant Identification: Uses a shared database with tenant-specific identifiers.
• Multiple Databases: Each tenant gets a separate database.
• Schema-Based Isolation: Uses PostgreSQL schemas for each tenant.

3. Setting Up Laravel Multi-Tenancy

Install the stancl/tenancy package:

composer require stancl/tenancy

4. Configuring Tenant Model

Define the Tenant model in app/Models/Tenant.php:

use Stancl\Tenancy\Database\Models\Tenant as BaseTenant;

class Tenant extends BaseTenant {
    protected $fillable = ['id', 'data'];
}

5. Creating Tenants

Create a new tenant using:

use App\Models\Tenant;

$tenant = Tenant::create(['id' => 'example.com']);
$tenant->domains()->create(['domain' => 'example.com']);

6. Middleware for Tenant Identification

Update middleware to detect the current tenant:

use Stancl\Tenancy\Middleware\InitializeTenancyByDomain;
use Stancl\Tenancy\Middleware\PreventAccessFromTenantDomains;

protected $middlewareGroups = [
    'tenant' => [
        InitializeTenancyByDomain::class,
        PreventAccessFromTenantDomains::class,
    ],
];

7. Running Tenant Migrations

To create tables for each tenant:

php artisan tenants:migrate

8. Conclusion

Laravel provides powerful multi-tenancy capabilities for SaaS applications. By structuring data correctly, you can ensure security, scalability, and performance.

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