Getting Started

Requirements

PHP 8.2+
Laravel 12 or 13

Grease is a pure userland package. It makes zero changes to the framework and adds zero cost to models that don't opt in.

Install

bash

composer require onelearningcommunity/grease

Use it

Add the trait to any model whose hot paths you want faster:

php

use Grease\Concerns\HasGrease;

class User extends Model
{
    use HasGrease;
}

Prefer inheritance? Extend the greased base model instead — it's identical in behaviour to use HasGrease:

php

class User extends \Grease\GreasedModel
{
    // ...
}

That's the entire setup. The model's hydration, casting, and serialization now run the greased fast paths, and its output stays byte-identical to vanilla Eloquent.

There is nothing to configure

No service provider to register (for the model tiers), no config file to publish, no cache to warm. The per-class "blueprint" builds itself lazily on first use and is Octane-safe. Add the trait, deploy, move on.

Pick your tiers (optional)

HasGrease bundles four composable tiers. You can also use them à la carte — they share one per-class blueprint and compose freely:

php

use Grease\Concerns\HasGreasedHydration;     // construct / hydration
use Grease\Concerns\HasGreasedAttributes;    // cast/date/mutator metadata memoization
use Grease\Concerns\HasGreasedCasts;         // flyweight cast dispatch + enum fast path
use Grease\Concerns\HasGreasedSerialization; // date-serialization round-trip elimination

class User extends Model
{
    use HasGreasedHydration;
    use HasGreasedAttributes;
}

The only tier with a (tiny, obscure) behavioural narrowing is HasGreasedCasts — see Caveats. Want the hydration and metadata wins with zero cast caveats? Use the two tiers above and skip the cast one.

The faster event dispatcher (optional, app-wide)

Grease also ships a drop-in faster event dispatcher — a different axis from the per-model tiers. It speeds up every dispatch in the app, not just model events. It's opt-in and not auto-discovered:

php

// bootstrap/providers.php, or the providers array in config/app.php
Grease\Events\GreaseEventServiceProvider::class,

See The Event Dispatcher for what it does and what it's worth.

Verify nothing changed

The promise is byte-identical output, so the best "did it work?" check is that your responses are unchanged while your profiler shows less time in Eloquent. If you want proof in your own app, diff a JSON response before and after — it'll be identical to the byte.

Next: How It Works →

Getting Started ​

Requirements ​

Install ​

Use it ​

Pick your tiers (optional) ​

The faster event dispatcher (optional, app-wide) ​

Verify nothing changed ​