Laravel Accessors and Mutators (Eloquent Steps 2 )

Accessors are used to format the attributes when you retrieve them from database. Whereas, Mutators are used to format the attributes before saving them into the database.

Lets get started

*Creating Accessors *

Suppose that you have two column

first_name & last_name in users table
Now you want to get the user full_name. Accessors create a "fake"attribute on the object which you can access as if it were a database column. So if your person has first_nameand last_nameattributes, you could write User Model:

`Syntax to create accessor –

To define an accessor, create a get{Attribute}Attribute method on your model where {Attribute} is the “studly” cased name of the column.`

Model User.php

  protected function getFullNameAttribute()
    {
        return $this->fist_name . "" . $this->last_name;
    }

and a Controller that looks like this:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;

class AccessorMutatorController extends Controller
{

    //get accesor userFullName
    public function getUser()
    {
        $users = User::get();

        foreach($users as $user){
            echo  $user->full_name;
        }

    }
}

also a routethat looks like this:

Route::get('accessor',[AccessorMutatorController::class,'getUser']);

Creating Mutators

A mutator transforms an Eloquent attribute value when it is set. Mutators work when we save data inside database table.

Syntax to create mutators –

To define a mutator, define a set{Attribute}Attribute method on your model where {Attribute} is the “studly” cased name of the column which we want to get altered when saved.

Model User.php

    // when "name" will save, it will convert into lowercase
    protected function setNameAttribute($value){
        $this->attributes['name'] = strtolower($value);
    }

and a Controller that looks like this:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;

class AccessorMutatorController extends Controller
{
    //setUser with mutator
    public function setUser()
    {
        $user = new User();

        $user->name = "Alan Donald";
        $user->fist_name = "Alan";
        $user->last_name = "Donald";
        $user->email = "jone@gmail.com";
        $user->password = bcrypt("123456");

        $user->save();
    }

}

also a routethat looks like this:

Route::get('mutator',[AccessorMutatorController::class,'setUser']);

Check the result

The result should look something like this:

Hurray! We have successfully created and used accessors and mutators , use this on your future projects to improve the readability , stability and performance of your code!