#7 Eloquent Enhancements

This package aims to provide extra functionalities to Laravel’s Eloquent. The functionalities, for now, are provided in form of traits, so you don’t have to change your models structure.

Error

This trait add two methods to your models.

use SigepEloquentEnhancementsTraitsError

setErrors

Receives a MessageBag and set in $errors property. The SaveAll uses it to store errors and allow you to use them in your controllers or views.

setErrors(IlluminateSupportMessageBag $errors)

errors

Returns errors setted by setErrors(). Create a empty MessageBag if errors is not defined.

errors()

SaveAll

This tait add the ability to save related objects in just one call. For example, if you have a User model who is related to Phone model, in a hasMany relationship, you can save a user with many phones with just one method call.

use SigepEloquentEnhancementsTraitsSaveAll;

Consider the following models:

class User extends Eloquent
{
    use SigepEloquentEnhancementsTraitsErrors;
    use SigepEloquentEnhancementsTraitsSaveAll;

    public function phones()
    {
        return $this->hasMany('Phone');
    }
}

class Phone extends Eloquent
{
    public function user()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo('User');
    }
}

We strongly suggest that you use model’s observers to validate your data and use the setErrors() to transport validation messages. Is the best way to validate related data when you use this trait.

You can create a user with two phones using the createAll() method.

$input = array(
    'name' => 'Bob',
    'email' => '[email protected]',
    'phones' => array (
        array('number' => '1111111'),
        array('number' => '2222222'),
    ),
);

$bob = new User();
$bob->createAll($input);

Note that we have a key with the name of the relationship that we create on User model. This is necessary so SaveAll knows which model are involved and how save your data. If everything is fine, createAll will return true. Else, will return false.

Now, if you need to edit a number using the User model (when you have a form that shows all data, for example), you can use the saveAll() method.

$input = array(
    'name' => 'Bob',
    'email' => '[email protected]',
    'phones' => array (
        array('id' => 1, 'number' => '111-1111'),
        array('id' => 2, 'number' => '222-2222'),
    ),
);

$bob = User::find(1); // assuming bob have the id = 1
$bob->saveAll($input);

See that we add the id from the number on the array. This is necessary so SaveAll knows that is not a new record, but an update.

You do something similar when you need to remove a related model. You just need to pass the _delete key:

$input = array(
    'name' => 'Bob',
    'email' => '[email protected]',
    'phones' => array (
        array('id' => 1, '_delete' => true),
    ),
);

$bob = User::find(1); // assuming bob have the id = 1
$bob->saveAll($input);

In this case, the phone #1 will be removed. The other properties are not necessary, just the id and the _delete key.

SaveAll can handle BelongsToMany relationships to. You just have to use like the examples above. But that kind of relationship has one particularity. If the pivot table has more columns them just the foreign keys, you can create a Relationship Model to handle the validations (assuming that you are using model observers to do the validation like suggested before :) ).

 

 

Links

GitHub – Packagist