Api Model Laravel Package

Single Relationships

In the first model we created we casted the company parameter to an Api Model, but wouldn't it be nicer if we could just create a Company Api Model and cast the parameter to a Company model instead of to a generic Api Model?

Well it is pretty easy to do, first we need to create a new model just like the one we created earlier:

<?php

namespace App\Api\Models;

use OUTRIGHTVision\ApiModel;

class Company extends ApiModel{}

Now we need to let know the User model that it needs to cast the company parameter to a Company model:

Add or extend the following protected attribute:

<?php
namespace App\Api\Models;

use OUTRIGHTVision\ApiModel;
use App\Api\Models\Company;

class User extends ApiModel{
    protected $cast_model = [
        'company' => Company::class,
    ];
}

And just like this we can now access the user's Company as a PHP object like this:

echo $user->company->name; // Result: Romaguera-Crona
echo $user->company->geo['lat']; // Result: -35.3159

But this is not much different from the case we had before. Well it isn't but now we can tell the Company model to cast the geo parameter to a Geo Api Model

Lets asume we already created a Geo Api Model file, now we need to add or extend the $cast_model attribute in Company like this:

<?php
namespace App\Api\Models;

use OUTRIGHTVision\ApiModel;
use App\Api\Models\Company;

class User extends ApiModel{
    protected $cast_model = [
        'company' => Company::class,
    ];
}

Now we have a fully Laravel-like Eloquent model we can do beautifull things like this:

echo $user->company->name; // Result: Romaguera-Crona
echo $user->company->geo->lat; // Result: -35.3159
echo $user->company->geo->randomParameter; // Result: null

HasOne and BelongsTo Relationship

This is just another way to cast a single parameter to an object.

Lets take the example of the $user beloning to a company, we can accomplish the same result by doing the following:

<?php
namespace App\Api\Models;

use OUTRIGHTVision\ApiModel;
use App\Api\Models\Company;

class User extends ApiModel{
    public function company()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo(Company::class, 'company');
    }
}

$this->belongsTo and $this->hasOne will have the same effect, it is just a matter of what does makes more sense in your project.

HasMany Relationship

We can also cast a collection of objects like this:

Lets asume we created a Post Api model:

<?php
namespace App\Api\Models;

use OUTRIGHTVision\ApiModel;
use App\Api\Models\Company;
use App\Api\Models\Post;

class User extends ApiModel{
    protected $cast_model = [
        'company' => Company::class,
    ];

    public function posts()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(Post::class, 'posts');
    }
}

Relationships are lazy loaded, that means we do not waste server memory creating a collection if the parameter is not used. The first time we do $user->posts is where we create the collection and return it.

If you want to eager load a relationship you can add or extend the included_default protected parameter.