Selective

Selective is a Laravel package that provides super-fast, Redis bloom filter-backed validation rules for unique and exists checks.

When you have millions of rows, running standard unique:users or exists:users validation on every request can be expensive, causing database strain and slowing down your application.

Selective solves this by adding a probabilistic data structure (a Bloom Filter) in front of your database. When validating, Selective checks the bloom filter in Redis first:

• If the bloom filter says the record doesn't exist, validation passes (or fails for exists) instantly without touching the database.
• If the bloom filter says the record might exist, Selective automatically falls back to standard database validation to confirm.

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• Laravel 10.0+ or 11.0+
• Redis with the RedisBloom module installed (e.g. redis-stack)
• Predis or PhpRedis extension

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require abdelrahmandwedar/selective

Publish the config file:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="selective-config"

Usage

Validation Rules

Use the rules exactly like you would use Laravel's standard rules.

BloomUnique

Validates that a given attribute does not exist in a database table.

use AbdelrahmanDwedar\Selective\Rules\BloomUnique;

$request->validate([
    'email' => ['required', 'email', new BloomUnique('users', 'email')],
]);

Ignoring a given ID (e.g. during updates):

new BloomUnique('users', 'email')->ignore($user->id)

BloomExists

Validates that a given attribute exists in a database table.

use AbdelrahmanDwedar\Selective\Rules\BloomExists;

$request->validate([
    'email' => ['required', 'email', new BloomExists('users', 'email')],
]);

Auto-Syncing with Eloquent

To keep your bloom filters automatically updated when you create or update records, use the HasBloomFilters trait on your Eloquent models:

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use AbdelrahmanDwedar\Selective\Traits\HasBloomFilters;

class User extends Model
{
    use HasBloomFilters;

    // Define which columns should be synced to bloom filters
    protected array $bloomFilters = ['email', 'username'];
}

Note: Bloom filters do not support deletion. When a model is deleted, the item remains in the filter. This is fine because the fallback database check will handle the "false positive" when checking the deleted item.

Artisan Commands

Seed a Bloom Filter

If you are adding this package to an existing project, you need to populate the bloom filters with your existing data:

php artisan bloom:seed users email

You can use the --fresh option to delete any existing filter and recreate it, or --error-rate and --capacity to override defaults.

View Filter Status

View information about your bloom filters:

# Show info for a specific filter
php artisan bloom:status users email

# Show info for all selective filters
php artisan bloom:status

Clear Filters

Delete bloom filters:

# Clear a specific filter
php artisan bloom:clear users email

# Clear all selective filters
php artisan bloom:clear --all

Configuration

You can configure the package in config/selective.php:

• default_error_rate: The acceptable probability of false positives (default: 0.01 or 1%).
• default_capacity: The default expected capacity of the bloom filter (default: 1000).
• redis_connection: The Redis connection to use from config/database.php (default: 'default').
• key_prefix: Prefix for Redis keys (default: 'selective:').
• fallback_on_error: If true, gracefully falls back to DB validation if Redis is down (default: true).
• auto_reserve: Automatically create filters if they don't exist (default: true).

How it works

1. You define a rule: new BloomUnique('users', 'email').
2. A user submits an email.
3. Selective checks the Redis bloom filter selective:users:email.
4. If the filter returns 0 (definitely not in filter): validation passes instantly.
5. If the filter returns 1 (might be in filter): Selective queries the users table to confirm if it's a real hit or a false positive.
6. Validation passes or fails based on the DB result.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.