library metable

leemason/metable

The Laravel Eloquent Metable Package is designed specifically for associating meta information to an Eloquent model.

Laravel Metable Package

, _(*1)

The Laravel Eloquent Metable Package is designed specifically for associating "meta" information to an Eloquent model., _(*2)

Installation

Just place require new package for your laravel installation via composer.json, _(*3)

composer require leemason/metable

Then hit composer update, _(*4)

Compatability

The Metable package has been developed with Laravel 5.1, i see no reason why it wouldnt work with 5.0 or even 4 but it is only tested for 5.1., _(*5)

Introduction

There are many use cases for this, most notably a User model where you may need the ability to assign multiple different types of profile information., _(*6)

Ideally you would always provide unique columns on your model tables to handle all of the data, but in more dynamic applications this may not always be a viable option., _(*7)

This is were "meta" information comes into its own., _(*8)

This package provides the means to associate any kind of data to a model, from ints, float, bools, arrays, to Collections and objects., _(*9)

Not only does it make it easy to assign this data, it also formats the data for the database and on return usage., _(*10)

For example a User may need multiple social links, with this package you can create a collection with the data, save right there and then as a Collection (which gets saved as json encoded string). Then whenever its retrieved in the future it will be converted back to a Collection., _(*11)

The "meta" is saved as related Eloquent models with simple key/value access., _(*12)

In the background the meta model also saved the values "type" for use when returning., _(*13)

The package comes with 2 traits which adds all the functionality needed and a few helpers to make managing the information even easier., _(*14)

The Metable trait is used to turn an Eloquent model into a meta model and provides all the background logic for formatting the meta value., _(*15)

Then the main functionality is accessed through the HasMeta trait., _(*16)

Here are a few examples (checkout the docs folder for more details information)., _(*17)

class User extends Eloquent{
    use LeeMason\Metable\HasMeta;

    protected $metaModel = 'UserMeta';
}

class UserMeta extends LeeMason\Metable\MetaModel{
    // By extending the MetaModel we dont have to set the $fillable or $casts properties!
    // Or you can just use the trait
}

$user = new User();

// uses Eloquent firstOrNew to either create or fetch/update the field by "key"
$user->addMeta('key', 'value');

// simple wrapper around addMeta for readability
$user->updateMeta('collection', new Collection(['collection', 'items']));

// need to save lots of data? not a problem
$user->fillMeta([
    'meta1' => true,
    'meta2' => 200,
    'meta3' => [1,2,3],
    ....
]);

// deleting is easy too
$user->deleteMeta('meta2');

// this will return a Collection object
$collection = $user->getMeta('collection');

// and of course, the meta data are related models so can be accessed, or set as such too
$user->meta();

//or
$user->meta

//and
$meta = new UserMeta();
$meta->key = 'thekey';
$meta->value = 'some value';
$user->meta()->save($meta);