Laravel Driver.js — Product Tours & Onboarding

Overview

User onboarding and feature discovery are critical to product adoption — but implementing them in Laravel applications has traditionally required context-switching into JavaScript. Laravel Driver.js eliminates this by wrapping the powerful Driver.js library in a fluent PHP API, allowing developers to define multi-step tours and feature highlights entirely in server-side PHP without writing a single line of JavaScript configuration.

The Problem It Solves

Adding a product tour to a Laravel + Blade application without this package requires:

1. Including Driver.js in your JavaScript bundle
2. Writing JSON-based tour step definitions in .js files
3. Building a system to track which users have completed which tours (session or database)
4. Keeping PHP-side user logic and JavaScript-side tour logic in sync across deployments

Each of these steps represents friction. Laravel Driver.js handles the entire lifecycle server-side.

Key Features

• Fluent PHP API — define multi-step tours with chainable PHP methods, no JSON or JS files
• Blade directive — @driverjs outputs all tour definitions in one line inside your layout
• Per-step configuration — set title, description, element selector, side, alignment, and overlay options per step
• Conditional display logic — show tours only to new users, specific roles, or on first page load
• Session persistence — built-in helpers to track tour completion via Laravel session or database
• Named tours — register multiple independent tours and trigger them by name
• Laravel 11/12 support — built for the current framework generation with full service provider registration

Usage Example

use AmjadIqbal\LaravelDriverJs\Facades\DriverJs;

DriverJs::tour('welcome-tour')
    ->step('#nav-menu', 'Navigation', 'Use the menu to explore all sections of the application.')
    ->step('#create-button', 'Create Content', 'Click here to create your first project.')
    ->step('#settings-link', 'Settings', 'Configure your account preferences here.')
    ->showOnce()
    ->register();

In your layout:

@driverjs

Technology Stack

PHP 8.2+, Laravel 11/12, Driver.js (lightweight JavaScript overlay library), Alpine.js (optional, for reactive tour triggering). Driver.js itself is a zero-dependency, ~25KB JavaScript library with no framework requirements.

Practical Use Cases

• SaaS applications onboarding new users to complex workflows
• Admin panels introducing newly released features to existing users
• Multi-role applications where different user types need different onboarding paths
• Internal tools where contextual help overlays reduce support ticket volume
• Portfolio and demo applications that benefit from guided feature walkthroughs

Source & License

Full source code, API documentation, and integration examples on GitHub. MIT Licensed.