Framework: Make Global or Universal Accessor to all the attributes of a model in Laravel 5.4 ?

[mohamedryan]

• Laravel Version: 5.4

Description:

In Laravel 5.4 , i want to make global or universal accessor to all the attributes of a model to check if the attribute value equal to NULL then return empty string instead of NULL !

for example : consider my response is an object of current login user :

$user  = Auth::user();
$user['auth_token'] = $user->api_token;

return response()->json([
     'data'          => [
                                'user'       => $user,
                            ],
     'message'   => 'success',
     'code'         => getMsgCode()
]);

the JSON response is like this :

{
  "data": {
    "user": {
      "id": 4,
      "name": "user1",
      "email": "[email protected]",
      "gender": null,
      "phone": null,
      "img": null,
      "role": "member",
      "status": 1,
      "created_at": "2017-04-09 14:44:54",
      "updated_at": "2017-04-15 16:43:51",
      "auth_token": "6csDDeFoDxWNvKGhvQcMnLsK7vRiF7FNhOGSUEYt2OmZ1OLhy4vvrpPDONk7"
    }
  },
  "message": "success",
  "code": 200
}

so as you see above in the response, for example the gender, phone or img ,, all of this attributes because there is no value to it in the database , it returned as a NULL value !!

and i don't want this null value , instead i want it to be an empty string ( "" )
like this :

{
  "data": {
    "user": {
      "id": 4,
      "name": "user1",
      "email": "[email protected]",
      "gender": "",
      "phone": "",
      "img": "",
      "role": "member",
      "status": 1,
      "created_at": "2017-04-09 14:44:54",
      "updated_at": "2017-04-15 16:43:51",
      "auth_token": "6csDDeFoDxWNvKGhvQcMnLsK7vRiF7FNhOGSUEYt2OmZ1OLhy4vvrpPDONk7"
    }
  },
  "message": "success",
  "code": 200
}

---

And i know about the Accessor in laravel .. for example i can do this for the img attribute, i can wirte this function ( accessor ) in User model :

public function getImgAttribute($value){
    return is_null($value) ? '' : $value;
}

but what i want is to apply an Global or Universal Accessor to all attributes instead of writing an Accessor for each attribute to handle the null value in the response.

[lindyhopchris]

Have you tried attribute casting?
https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/eloquent-mutators#attribute-casting

[mohamedryan]

@lindyhopchris :

the attribute casting applied on setting data or on getting ??

and if it on getting data, this is the only way to deal with this situation ? , as i don't want to write all the attributes that is nullable instead i want to write one code like the accessor to be applied on all attributes ..

Thanks .

[themsaid]

You could override the getArrayableAttributes Model method and tinker with it a bit.

Anyway please continue on the forums, we try to keep this repo for bug reporting only.

[lindyhopchris]

From looking at the code I believe (but haven't tried myself) that the casting only affects getters, as the casting doesn't seem to be called in the setter.

https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/5.4/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Concerns/HasAttributes.php#L511-L543

[mohamedryan]

@themsaid : thank you Mohamed, its worked for me :+1: :100:

by doing this in my model :

protected function getArrayableAttributes()
    {

        foreach ($this->attributes as $key => $value) {
            if ($key == 'deleted_at') continue;

            if ( is_null($value) ) {
                $this->attributes[$key] = '';
            }
        }

        return $this->getArrayableItems($this->attributes);
    }

@lindyhopchris : thanks for your replaying :+1: