Fetching dynamic attributes for models on-the-fly in Laravel
There exist this neat feature in Laravel using which you can add attributes in the models that do not have a respective column in your database.
You can achieve this by first creating an accessor for the attribute you want to be returned when casting models to an array or JSON. You can create an accessor like below.
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Post extends Model
{
/**
* The accessors to append to the model's array form.
*
* @var array
*/
protected $appends = ['is_admin'];
/**
* Get the administrator flag for the post.
*
* @return bool
*/
public function getIsEditable()
{
return $this->attributes['admin'] == 'yes';
}
}
Notice here that, you need to add the attribute name to the appends property on the model. Also note that, attribute names are typically referenced in snake case, even though the accessor is defined using camel case.
Once the attribute has been added to the appends list, it will be included in both the model’s array and JSON representations.
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Fetching dynamic attributes on run time
You can use the append method on model instance to append attributes on-the-fly.
return $post->append('is_editable')->toArray();
Or if you can use setAppends method, if you want to append multiple attributes like so.
return $post->setAppends(['is_editable', 'is_expired'])->toJson();
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