What if you could build richer hierarchies, add shared behavior across models, and make your data immutable while retaining historical data—all without Event Sourcing or graph databases? Delegated Types is a powerful pattern that transforms how you model your Eloquent models.

Tighten

Delegated Types is a pattern for representing class hierarchies in Active Record ORMs using polymorphic relationships instead of inheritance. By creating a shared root model (like Entry) that connects to specialized models through morphTo relationships, you can add shared behavior across models, build recursive hierarchies, and maintain immutable historical data without Event Sourcing. The pattern simplifies routes and controllers, enables richer data modeling (like mixing messages and notes in the same thread), and allows treating relational databases like graphs while retaining historical versions of records.

Introduction to Delegated Types