John Davidson

Message:

I am new to laravel and what I currently do not understand is, how to properly do the conversion between json <--> model <--> database.

Let's assume all three variants are differently represented. I will take a quite uncommon example, just to understand it better.

So what if the requirement is to:

• Json data must be lower case test example


• Model should be upper case for each first letter (ucwords) Test Example


• Database should store as upper case TEST EXAMPLE

I know that there are CastsAttributes which to me sound like the usecase is to convert between model <--> database.

Also there is the serialize() function, that can be used to convert back the json from the model: json <-- model.

What I am missing is the json --> model conversion. How can we do that? What is the best practice here? I've also seen the Resource class, but I found no native way to convert this to a model.

What would be the best practice?

---

My Answer:
In Laravel, you can use Eloquent Mutators to handle the conversion between JSON and model attributes. Mutators allow you to define custom attribute accessors and mutators on your model.

Here's an example of how you can achieve the conversion between JSON and model attributes in your scenario:

1. Define a mutator in your Eloquent model to convert the JSON attribute to the desired format:

php
class Example extends Model
{
public function setTestExampleAttribute($value)
{
$this->attributes['test_example'] = ucwords($value);
}

public function getTestExampleAttribute($value)
{
return strtolower($value);
}
}


2. When you receive JSON data, you can create a new instance of the model and set the attributes accordingly:

php
$data = json_decode($jsonData, true);

$example = new Example();
$example->test_example = $data['test_example'];
$example->save();


3. When you retrieve the model from the database, the mutator will automatically convert the attribute to the desired format:

php
$example = Example::find($id);
echo $example->test_example; // This will output TEST EXAMPLE


By using mutators in your Eloquent model, you can easily handle the conversion between JSON, model attributes, and the database. This is a common practice in Laravel and provides a clean and maintainable way to handle attribute transformations.