It is possible to store array value in database and using with where clause in Laravel?

Question

I want to store array type in a column in database and select it back using where to compare n_group_code_id between array($gID) as below function.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `tb_notification` (
  `id` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `n_user_id` int(10) NOT NULL,
  `n_group_code_id` varchar(30) NOT NULL,
  `n_source_id` int(10) NOT NULL,
  `n_activity_type` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  `n_create_times` datetime NOT NULL,
  `n_description` varchar(160) NOT NULL,
  `n_status` int(2) NOT NULL,
  `url` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
  `updated_at` datetime NOT NULL,
  `created_at` datetime NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=542 ;

--
-- Dumping data for table `tb_notification`
--

INSERT INTO `tb_notification` (`id`, `n_user_id`, `n_group_code_id`, `n_source_id`, `n_activity_type`, `n_create_times`, `n_description`, `n_status`, `url`, `updated_at`, `created_at`) VALUES
(535, 66, '[7,11,11,11]', 1, 'Issue Till', '2016-04-25 07:04:54', 'Issue Till', 0, '0', '2016-04-25 07:59:54', '2016-04-25 07:59:54'),
(536, 66, '[7,11,11,11]', 1, 'Issue Till', '2016-04-25 08:04:47', 'Issue Till', 0, '0', '2016-04-25 08:15:47', '2016-04-25 08:15:47'),
(537, 66, '[7,11,11,11]', 159, 'Transfer till', '2016-04-25 08:04:45', 'Transfer till', 0, '0', '2016-04-25 08:20:45', '2016-04-25 08:20:45'),
(538, 66, '[7,11,11,11]', 160, 'Transfer till', '2016-04-25 09:04:04', 'Transfer till', 0, '0', '2016-04-25 09:06:04', '2016-04-25 09:06:04'),
(539, 66, '[7,11,11,11]', 1, 'Issue Till', '2016-04-26 07:04:29', 'Issue Till', 0, '0', '2016-04-26 07:35:29', '2016-04-26 07:35:29'),
(540, 66, '[7,11,11,11]', 162, 'Issue Till', '2016-04-26 07:04:32', 'Issue Till', 0, '0', '2016-04-26 07:38:32', '2016-04-26 07:38:32'),
(541, 69, '[7,11,11,11]', 163, 'return Till', '2016-04-26 08:04:33', 'return Till', 0, '0', '2016-04-26 08:39:33', '2016-04-26 08:39:33');

Here is my function:

 public function getNotification($user_id =null, $gId=null)
    {
            if(is_array($gId)) {

                $this->_data = self::select('*')
                    ->join('users', 'users.id', '=', 'n_user_id')
                    ->where('users.id','=', $user_id)
                    ->whereIn('n_group_code_id',$gId)
                    ->get();
                if (count($this->_data)) {
                    return $this->_data;
                } else {
                    return false;
                }
            }else {
                return false;
            }

    }

Answer 1

It's possible, but I'd recommend you to not reinvent the wheel and use json type in DB and encode your array before saving and decode it after loading from DB.

First of all, change your column type from string to json (click first link to find all info).

To save data:

$model = new Model();
....
$model->jsonData = json_encode($array);
$model->save();

To retrieve data:

$model = Model::find($id);
$array = json_decode($model->jsonData);

Also, you could do that automatically with using accessors and mutators