Pipelines: Chaining Multi-Step Logic

Sometimes a Service or Action class grows because it performs multiple sequential steps. For example, when onboarding a new user, you might need to: generate a profile photo, create demo data, activate a trial subscription, and send a welcome email.

You could put all of that in one method, but there's a more structural alternative: Pipelines.

Laravel's Pipeline facade lets you send data through a series of "pipe" classes, each performing one step. It's the same mechanism Laravel uses internally for middleware.

Pipelines are not a replacement for Services or Actions. They're an alternative for multi-step sequential operations where each step is its own class.

How Pipelines Work

The basic Pipeline syntax:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Pipeline;
 
$user = Pipeline::send($user)
    ->through([
        GenerateProfilePhoto::class,
        CreateDemoProject::class,
        ActivateTrialSubscription::class,
        SendWelcomeEmail::class,
    ])
    ->thenReturn();

Each "pipe" class receives the data, does its work, and passes it to the next pipe. Here's what one looks like:

app/Pipes/GenerateProfilePhoto.php:

namespace App\Pipes;
 
use App\Models\User;
use Closure;
 
class GenerateProfilePhoto
{
    public function handle(User $user, Closure $next)
    {
        $user->update([
            'avatar' => 'https://ui-avatars.com/api/?name=' . urlencode($user->name),
        ]);
 
        return $next($user);
    }
}

app/Pipes/CreateDemoProject.php:

namespace App\Pipes;
 
use App\Models\User;
use App\Models\Project;
use Closure;
 
class CreateDemoProject
{
    public function handle(User $user, Closure $next)
    {
        Project::create([
            'user_id' => $user->id,
            'name' => 'Demo project 1',
        ]);
 
        return $next($user);
    }
}

The pattern is always the same: accept the data, do your work, call $next($data).

Using Pipelines in the Controller

In the Controller, you would replace a long Service method with...