Prevent Updating or Saving of Laravel Models

For example, after a model gets created I don't want anyone to be able to update that record again. Instead, it should get overwritten with a brand new record and archived.

Here's a simple trait that you can use on your models to disable updating:

trait PreventsUpdating
{
    public static function bootPreventsUpdating()
    {
        static::updating(function (Model $model) {
            return false;
        });
    }
}

Simply use this on your model and you will no longer be able to update it.

Improvements

We could take this a step further and make it more reusable and DRY-er.

trait PreventsModelEvents
{
    public static function bootPreventsModelEvents()
    {
        foreach (static::$prevents as $event) {
            static::{$event}(function (Model $model) {
                return false;
            });
        }
    }
}

Now when we want to use it on a model, we can do this:

class User extends Model
{
    use PreventsModelEvents;

    protected static $prevents = ['updating'];
}

When we try to update our User model, it will be stopped and will return false. This can be applied to the other events such as saving and creating too.