HasMeta

A Laravel trait to access model meta data as if it was a property on your model

Installation

Run composer require jaybizzle/hasmeta 0.1.* or add "jaybizzle/hasmeta": "0.1.*" to your composer.json file

In the Model that you want to utilise HasMeta add the following properties

	use Jaybizzle\Hasmeta\HasMetaTrait;

	protected $meta_model       = 'ModelName'; // the name of your meta data model
	protected $meta_foreign_key = 'user_id'; // the foreign key of your main model
	protected $meta_primary_key = 'meta_id'; // the primary key of you meta data model
	protected $meta_key_name    = 'dataName'; // the column name that stores your meta data key name
	protected $meta_value_name  = 'dataValue'; // the column name that stores your meta data value

Real World Example

Nothing like a simple example to explain things

###Setup

users table

| id | email | password | | ------------- | ------------- | ------------- | | 1 | john@somewhere.com | ADpQeKh$2y$10$0dh/BerzTrEOBhu4SR3w05 | | 2 | sam@somewhere.com | pQeKhrzTrEOBhu$2y$10$0dh/BeAD4SR3w05 | | 3 | neil@somewhere.com | ADpQeKhrzTrEOBhu4SR3w05$2y$10$0dh/Be | | 4 | ben@somewhere.com | BeADpQeKhrzTrEO$2y$10$0dh/Bhu4SR3w05 | | 5 | mark@somewhere.com | DpQeKhrzTrEOBhu4SR3w05$2y$10$0dh/BeA |

users_meta table

| id | user_id | meta_name | meta_value | ------------- | ------------- | ------------- | ------------- | | 1 | 1 | first_name | John | | 2 | 1 | surname | Roberts | | 3 | 1 | age | 20 | | 4 | 1 | gender | Male | | 5 | 2 | first_name | Steven | | 6 | 2 | surname | Watson | | 7 | 2 | age | 35 | | 8 | 2 | gender | Male | | 9 | 3 | first_name | Sam | | 10 | 3 | surname | Faddy | | 11 | 3 | age | 30 | | 12 | 3 | gender | Female | | 13 | 4 | first_name | Ben | | 14 | 4 | surname | Prokop | | 15 | 4 | age | 32 | | 16 | 4 | gender | Male | | 17 | 5 | first_name | Jo | | 18 | 5 | surname | Blair | | 19 | 5 | age | 31 | | 20 | 5 | gender | Female |

User.php model

class User extends Eloquent {

	use Jaybizzle\Hasmeta\HasMetaTrait;

	protected $meta_model       = 'UserMeta';
	protected $meta_foreign_key = 'user_id';
	protected $meta_primary_key = 'id';
	protected $meta_key_name    = 'meta_name';
	protected $meta_value_name  = 'meta_value';


	/**
	 * The database table used by the model.
	 *
	 * @var string
	 */
	protected $table = 'users';

	/**
	 * The primary key on the table
	 *
	 * @var string
	 */
	protected $primaryKey = 'id';
	
	// ...
}

UserMeta.php model

class UserMeta extends Eloquent {

	/**
	 * The database table used by the model.
	 *
	 * @var string
	 */
	protected $table = 'users_meta';

	/**
	 * The primary key on the table
	 *
	 * @var string
	 */
	protected $primaryKey = 'id';

	// ...
}

###Usage

Now we can simply do this for getting meta data...

$user = User::find(1);
echo $user->gender; // Will output 'Male'

We can save meta data easily too...

$user = User::find(1);
$user->gender = 'Female';
$user->save();

Delete meta...

$user = User::find(1);
$user->gender = null;
$user->save();

New meta...

$user = User::find(1);
$user->anything_you_want = 'some lovely value';
$user->save();