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();