best way to run string functions over returned database object

laravel, laravel-5, php

Solution

I think you may be looking for a collection macro. You would register it in your `AppServiceProvider` like:

Collection::macro('formatPropUrl', function() {

    return collect($this->items)->map(function($property) {
        $property->prop_url=str_replace("http://domain.com/","http://www.domain.com/",$property->prop_url);

        return $property;
    });

});

Then for your query you could do:

$featuredProperties = DB::table('properties')
    ->where([
        ['featured_property', '=', '1'],
        ['supplier_id', '=', 123],
    ])
    ->orderBy('prop_id', 'desc')
    ->limit(6)
    ->get()
    ->formatPropUrl();

Problem

I need to run various string functions over the data returned from the database before I send it to the view using Laravel 5.3. Basic stuff like str_replace(). Now maybe there's a good way to setup Accessors on my model and somehow use the model on the landing page but I thought I would go a different route and just do this one query manually outside of the model. So I have a view provider that successfully gets my data into the view. It looks like this: ``` class ViewLandingProvider extends ServiceProvider { public function boot() { // process when featured homepage element is present... View::composer('mybladetemplate', function ($view){ $featuredProperties = DB::table('properties') ->where([ ['featured_property', '=', '1'], ['supplier_id', '=', 123], ]) ->orderBy('prop_id', 'desc') ->limit(6) ->get(); // run str_replace! $featuredProperties->each(function($property){ $property->prop_url=str_replace("http://domain.com/","http://www.domain.com/",$property->prop_url); }); View::share('featuredProperties', $featuredProperties); }); } } ``` this then loops within a view and it all works nicely ``` @if(isset($featuredProperties)) @foreach ($featuredProperties as $property) <li> <a title="{{ $property->prop_name }}" href="{{ $property->prop_url }}"></a> </li> @endforeach @endif ``` As you can see in the example above, I have str_replace() running over the data collection using ->each() and that's working to let me do a simple string replacement that I need to undertake. Being Laravel though, I'm sure there's some magic that could be pulled here to do this more intelligently. So is there a way in the actual database request code that I can specify that a certain column to be returned should automatically have a function run over it ? Just to clarify, I want to make these changes in the provider php rather than the view file and I want to do this outside of a model with Accessors.

Original source