What's the correct way to provide default values for Laravel model fields outside of MySQL?

Question

I have a Laravel model which has various fields that default to NULL in the database and cannot easily be changed for legacy reasons. I would like to always return these as an empty string, for example, when returning JSON back from my route. Is there a "standard" way to define defaults in a model somehow?

Another case might be that a certain field always needs some processing done on it before being returned, can this also be defined in a similar way? Thanks.

Answer 1

Default values

You can specify default values with the $attributes property:

class MyModel extends Eloquent {
    protected $attributes = array(
        'foo' => 'bar'
    );
}

However I think this will still be overwritten by the NULL from the db. The use case for $attributes is rather when creating and inserting new records.

Manipulating JSON / array output

To change your model before it is converted to JSON / into an array you can override toArray() in your model:

public function toArray(){
    $array = parent::toArray();
    foreach($array as &$value){
        if($value == null){
            $value = '';
        }
    }
    return $array;
}

Custom attributes with accessors

If you have certain fields that require special kind of processing (e.g. formatting a date, concatenating two attributes) you can use an accessor:

public function getFullNameAttribute(){
    return $this->attributes['firstname'].' '.$this->attributes['lastname'];
}

Now you can access it by $model->full_name (or $model->fullName whichever you prefer)

And finally, to add it to the JSON / array output, use $appends

protected $appends = array('full_name');