README

Laravel SMS Catcher

A development-only Laravel package that captures SMS notifications and displays them in a beautiful, phone-inspired inbox – think Mailpit, but for your sms notification channel.

Screenshots

SMS Inbox Dashboard

Click to view full-size images:

SMS Catcher inbox showing list of captured messages

The main inbox view displays all captured SMS messages with sender, recipient, and timestamp information.

Message Detail View

Click any message to see the full details in a beautiful phone-style preview, making it easy to verify how your SMS will appear to recipients.

Installation

Require the package in your application as a dev dependency. Until a tagged release is published you will need to target the dev-main branch explicitly:

composer require --dev michal78/laravel-sms-catcher

The package is auto-discovered by Laravel, but you can manually register the service provider if you have discovery disabled:

// config/app.php
'providers' => [
    // ...
    SmsCatcher\SmsCatcherServiceProvider::class,
];

Configuration

By default the dashboard is only enabled when your application is running in the local environment or when APP_DEBUG=true. You can override this behaviour via the SMS_CATCHER_ENABLED environment variable.

Publish the configuration file if you would like to customise the dashboard path or storage location:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=sms-catcher-config

This will create config/sms-catcher.php with the following options:

enabled: Toggle the catcher on/off.
route.prefix: URL prefix for the dashboard (defaults to /sms-catcher).
route.middleware: Middleware stack wrapping the dashboard routes.
storage_path: File that stores captured messages.

Usage

Trigger any Laravel notification that uses the sms channel and the payload will be recorded automatically. Visit the dashboard (default at http://your-app.test/sms-catcher) to see the inbox:

Inbox view summarises each message.
Click a message to view details and a phone-style preview.
Clear individual messages or wipe the entire inbox.

Messages are stored as JSON within your application's storage folder (storage/framework/sms-catcher.json). The file is safe to delete; it will be recreated as new messages arrive.

Note: The catcher inspects notifications by invoking their toSms method. Ensure your notifications implement this method and return either a string, array, or object containing the text body.

Security

This package is intended for local development only. Do not enable it in production environments.

michal78 / laravel-sms-catcher

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