Cloner

A trait for Laravel Eloquent models that lets you clone a model and it's relationships, including files. Even to another database.

Installation

1. composer require bkwld/cloner
2. Add Bkwld\Cloner\ServiceProvider to your app's providers config.
3. use the Bkwld\Cloner\Cloneable trait on models you want to clone.

Usage

Your model should now look like this:

class Article extends Eloquent {
	use \Bkwld\Cloner\Cloneable;
}

You can clone an Article model like so:

$clone = Article::first()->duplicate();

In this example, $clone is a new Article that has been saved to the database. To clone to a different database:

$clone = Article::first()->duplicateTo('production');

Where production is the connection name of a different Laravel database connection.

Cloning relationships

Lets say your Article has many Photos (a one to many relationship) and can have more than one Authors (a many to many relationship). Now, your Article model should look like this:

class Article extends Eloquent {
	use \Bkwld\Cloner\Cloneable;

	protected $cloneable_relations = ['photos', 'authors'];

	public function photos() {
		return $this->hasMany('Photo');
	}

	public function authors() {
		return $this->belongsToMany('Author');
	}
}

The $cloneable_relations informs the Cloneable as to which relations it should follow when cloning. Now when you call Article::first()->duplicate(), all of the Photo rows of the original will be copied and associated with the new Article. And new pivot rows will be created associating the new Article with the Authors of the original (because it is a many to many relationship, no new Author rows are created). Furthermore, if the Photo model has many of some other model, you can specify $cloneable_relations in its class and Cloner will continue replicating them as well.

Note: Many to many relationships will not be cloned to a different database because the related instance may not exist in the other database or could have a different primary key.

Customizing the cloned attributes

By default, Cloner does not copy the id (or whatever you've defined as the key for the model) field; it assumes a new value will be auto-incremented. It also does not copy the created_at or updated_at. You can add additional attributes to ignore as follows:

class Photo extends Eloquent {
	use \Bkwld\Cloner\Cloneable;

	protected $clone_exempt_attributes = ['uid', 'source'];

	public function article() {
		return $this->belongsTo('Article');
	}

	public function onCloning($src, $child = null) {
		$this->uid = str_random();
		if($child) echo 'This was cloned as a relation!';
		echo 'The original key is: '.$src->getKey();
	}
}

The $clone_exempt_attributes adds to the defaults. If you want to replace the defaults altogether, override the trait's getCloneExemptAttributes() method and return an array.

Also, note the onCloning() method in the example. It is being used to make sure a unique column stays unique. The Cloneable trait adds to no-op callbacks that get called immediately before a model is saved during a duplication and immediately after: onCloning() and onCloned(). The $child parameter allows you to customize the behavior based on if it's being cloned as a relation or direct.

In addition, Cloner fires the following Laravel events during cloning:

• cloner::cloning: ModelClass
• cloner::cloned: ModelClass

ModelClass is the classpath of the model being cloned. The event payload contains the clone and the original model instances.

Cloning files

If your model references files saved disk, you'll probably want to duplicate those files and update the references. Otherwise, if the clone is deleted and it cascades delets, you will delete files referenced by your original model. Cloner allows you to specify a file attachment adapter and ships with support for Bkwld\Upchuck. Here's some example usage:

class Photo extends Eloquent {
	use \Bkwld\Cloner\Cloneable;

	protected $cloneable_file_attributes = ['image'];

	public function article() {
		return $this->belongsTo('Article');
	}
}

The $cloneable_file_attributes property is used by the Cloneable trait to identify which columns contain files. Their values are passed to the attachment adapter, which is responsible for duplicating the files and returning the path to the new file.

If you don't use Bkwld\Upchuck you can write your own implementation of the Bkwld\Cloner\AttachmentAdapter trait and wrap it in a Laravel IoC container named 'cloner.attachment-adapter'. For instance, put this in your app/start/global.php:

App::singleton('cloner.attachment-adapter', function($app) {
	return new CustomAttachmentAdapter;
});