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Turbo Streams

Introduction

Out of everything Turbo provides, it's Turbo Streams that benefits the most from a tight backend integration.

Turbo Laravel offers helper functions, Blade Components, and Model traits to generate Turbo Streams. Turbo will add a new Content-Type to the HTTP Accept header (Accept: text/vnd.turbo-stream.html, ...) on Form submissions. This is a signal to the backend that we can return a Turbo Stream response for that form submission instead of an HTML document, if we want to.

Here's an example of a route handler detecting and returning a Turbo Stream response to a form submission:

Route::post('posts/{post}/comments', function (Post $post) {
    $comment = $post->comments()->create(/** params */);
 
    if (request()->wantsTurboStream()) {
        return turbo_stream($comment);
    }
 
    return back();
});

The request()->wantsTurboStream() macro added to the request class will check if the request accepts Turbo Stream and return true or false accordingly.

The turbo_stream() helper function may be used to generate streams, but you may also use the response()->turboStream() macro as well. In the docs, we'll only use the helper function, but you may use either one of those.

Here's what the HTML response will look like:

<turbo-stream action="append" target="comments">
    <template>
        <div id="comment_123">
            <p>Hello, World</p>
        </div>
    </template>
</turbo-stream>

Most of these things were "guessed" based on the conventions we talked about earlier. But you can override most things, like so:

turbo_stream($comment)->target('post_comments');

This would render the following Turbo Stream:

<turbo-stream action="append" target="post_comments">
    <template>
        <div id="comment_123">
            <p>Hello, World</p>
        </div>
    </template>
</turbo-stream>

Although it's handy to pass a model instance to the turbo_stream() function - which will be used to decide the default values of the Turbo Stream response based on the model's current state, sometimes you may want to build a Turbo Stream response manually:

turbo_stream()
    ->target('comments')
    ->action('append')
    ->view('comments.partials.comment', ['comment' => $comment]);

There are also shorthand methods which may be used as well:

turbo_stream()->append($comment);
turbo_stream()->prepend($comment);
turbo_stream()->before($comment);
turbo_stream()->after($comment);
turbo_stream()->replace($comment);
turbo_stream()->update($comment);
turbo_stream()->remove($comment);
turbo_stream()->refresh();

You may pass an instance of an Eloquent model to all these shorthand methods, except the refresh one, which will be used to figure things out like target, the view, and will also pass that model instance to the view.

For a model App\Models\Comment, the [convention] says that the view is located at resources/views/comments/_comment.blade.php. Based on the model's class basename, it will figure out the name of the variable that the view should depend on, which would be $comment in this case, so it would pass the model instance down to the view automatically. For that reason, when using the convention (which is optional), the model view must only depend on the model instance to be available (no globals or other locals with no defaults).

Alternativelly, you may also pass strings to the shorthand stream builders, which will be used as the target, and an optional content string, which will be rendered instead of a partial, for instance:

turbo_stream()->append('statuses', __('Comment created!'));

The optional content parameter expects either a string, a view instance, or an instance of Laravel's Illuminate\Support\HtmlString, so you could do something like:

turbo_stream()->append('some_dom_id', view('greetings', [
    'name' => 'Tester',
]));

Or more explicitly by passing an instance of the HtmlString as content:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Blade;
use Illuminate\Support\HtmlString;
 
turbo_stream()->append('statuses', new HtmlString(
    Blade::render('<div>Hello, {{ $name }}</div>', ['name' => 'Tony'])
));

Which will result in a Turbo Stream like this:

<turbo-stream target="statuses" action="append">
    <template>
        <div>Hello, Tony</div>
    </template>
</turbo-stream>

For both the before and after methods you need additional calls to specify the view template you want to insert, since the given model/string will only be used to specify the target, something like:

turbo_stream()
    ->before($comment)
    ->view('comments.partials.flash_message', [
        'message' => __('Comment created!'),
    ]);

Just like the other shorthand stream builders, you may also pass an option content string or HtmlString instance to the before and after shorthands. When doing that, you don't need to specify the view section.

turbo_stream()->before($comment, __('Oh, hey!'));

You can read more about Turbo Streams in the Turbo Handbook.

As mentioned earlier, passing a model to the turbo_stream() helper (or the shorthand Turbo Stream builders) will pre-fill the pending response object with some defaults based on the model's state.

It will build a remove Turbo Stream if the model was just deleted (or if it was trashed - in case it's a Soft Deleted model), an append if the model was recently created (which you can override the action as the second parameter), a replace if the model was just updated (you can also change it to update using the second parameter.) Here's how overriding would look like:

return turbo_stream($comment, 'append');

Turbo Streams & Morph

Both the update and replace Turbo Stream actions can specify a [method="morph"] attribute, so the action will use DOM morphing instead of the default renderer.

To generate a Turbo Stream with the [method="morph"] attribute, chain the morph() method:

turbo_stream()->replace(dom_id($post, 'comments'), view('comments.partials.comment', [
    'comment' => $comment,
]))->morph();

This would generate the following Turbo Stream HTML:

<turbo-stream action="replace" target="comments_post_123" method="morph">
    <template>...</template>
</turbo-stream>

And here's the update action version:

turbo_stream()->update(dom_id($post, 'comments'), view('comments.partials.comment', [
    'comment' => $comment,
]))->morph();

This would generate the following Turbo Stream HTML:

<turbo-stream action="update" target="comments_post_123" method="morph">
    <template>...</template>
</turbo-stream>

Target Multiple Elements

Turbo Stream elements can either have a target with a DOM ID or a targets attribute with a CSS selector to match multiple elements. You may use the xAll shorthand methods to set the targets attribute instead of target:

turbo_stream()->appendAll('.comment', 'Some content');
turbo_stream()->prependAll('.comment', 'Some content');
turbo_stream()->updateAll('.comment', 'Some content');
turbo_stream()->replaceAll('.comment', 'Some content');
turbo_stream()->beforeAll('.comment', 'Some content');
turbo_stream()->afterAll('.comment', 'Some content');
turbo_stream()->removeAll('.comment');

With the exception of the removeAll method, the xAll methods accept astring of inline content, an instance of a View (which may be created using the view() function provided by Laravel), or an instance of the HtmlSafe class as the second parameter.

When creating Turbo Streams using the builders, you may also specify the CSS class using the targets() (plural) method instead of the target() (singular) version:

turbo_stream()
    ->targets('.comment')
    ->action('append')
    ->view('comments.partials.comment', ['comment' => $comment]);

Turbo Stream Macros

The turbo_stream() function returns an instance of PendingTurboStreamResponse, which is macroable. This means you can create your own DSL for your custom Turbo Streams. Let's say you always return flash messages from your controllers like so:

class ChirpsController extends Controller
{
    public function destroy(Request $request, Chirp $chirp)
    {
        $this->authorize('delete', $chirp);
 
        $chirp->delete();
 
        if ($request->wantsTurboStream()) {
            return turbo_stream([
                turbo_stream($chirp),
                turbo_stream()->append('notifications', view('layouts.notification', [
                    'message' => __('Chirp deleted.'),
                ])),
            ]);
        }
 
        // ...
    }
}

Chances are you're gonna return flash messages from all your controllers, so you could create a custom macro like so:

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    public function boot()
    {
        PendingTurboStreamResponse::macro('flash', function (string $message) {
            return $this->append('notifications', view('layouts.notification', [
                'message' => $message,
            ]));
        });
    }
}

You could then rewrite that controller like so:

class ChirpsController extends Controller
{
    public function destroy(Request $request, Chirp $chirp)
    {
        $this->authorize('delete', $chirp);
 
        $chirp->delete();
 
        if ($request->wantsTurboStream()) {
            return turbo_stream([
                turbo_stream($chirp),
                turbo_stream()->append('notifications', view('layouts.notification', [
                    'message' => __('Chirp deleted.'),
                ])),
                turbo_stream()->flash(__('Chirp deleted.')), 
            ]);
        }
 
        // ...
    }
}

Turbo Streams Combo

You may combine multiple Turbo Streams in a single response like so:

return turbo_stream([
    turbo_stream()
        ->append($comment)
        ->target(dom_id($comment->post, 'comments')),
    turbo_stream()
        ->update(dom_id($comment->post, 'comments_count'), view('posts.partials.comments_count', [
            'post' => $comment->post,
        ])),
]);

Although this is a valid option, it might feel like too much work for a controller. If that's the case, you may use Custom Turbo Stream Views.

Custom Turbo Stream Views

Although combining Turbo Streams in a single response right there in the controller is a valid option, it may feel like too much work for a controller. If that's the case, you may want to extract the Turbo Streams to a Blade view and respond with that instead:

return turbo_stream_view('comments.turbo.created_stream', [
    'comment' => $comment,
]);

Similar to the turbo_stream() helper function and the Response::turboStream() macro, you may prefer using the Response::turboStreamView() macro. It works the same way.

Here's an example of a more complex custom Turbo Stream view:

@include('layouts.turbo.flash_stream')
 
<turbo-stream target="@domid($comment->post, 'comments')" action="append">
    <template>
        @include('comments.partials.comment', ['comment' => $comment])
    </template>
</turbo-stream>

Remember, these are Blade views, so you have the full power of Blade at your hands. In this example, we're including a shared Turbo Stream partial which could append any flash messages we may have. That layouts.turbo.flash_stream could look like this:

@if (session()->has('status'))
<turbo-stream target="notice" action="append">
    <template>
        @include('layouts.partials.flash')
    </template>
</turbo-stream>
@endif

Similar to the <x-turbo::frame> Blade component, there's also a <x-turbo::stream> Blade component that can simplify things a bit. It has the same convention of figuring out the DOM ID when you're passing a model instance or an array as target attribute of the <x-turbo::frame> component. When using the component version, there's no need to specify the template wrapper for the Turbo Stream tag, as that will be added by the component itself. So, the same example would look something like this:

@include('layouts.turbo.flash_stream')
 
<x-turbo::stream :target="[$comment->post, 'comments']" action="append">
    @include('comments.partials.comment', ['comment' => $comment])
</x-turbo::stream>

I hope you can see how powerful this can be to reusing views.

Custom Actions

You may also use the <x-turbo::stream> Blade component for your custom actions as well:

<x-turbo::stream action="console_log" value="Hello World" />

Custom actions are only supported from Blade views. You cannot return those from controllers using the Pending Streams Builder.

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