lara-dto

Add data transfer objects to your Laravel app to transfer structured data

Installation

To install the package to your laravel app, just require it using composer:

composer require andrepolo/lara-dto

To modify the config file, for example to change the default namespace of your data transfer item classes, you can eighter use the artisan command:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=datatransfer-config

or use the command that comes with the package:

php artisan ap-dto:publish:config

After executing this you will find a new config file in your app/config directory: datatransfer.php

Creating Items and Collections

Creating a DataTransferItem class

The recommended way is to use the artisan command that ships with this package:

php artisan ap-dto:make:item

This command will create a new DataTransferItem with the given name and store it in the namespace which is defined in the config file datatransfer.php in the namespace section. If you pass a name like this Subfolder\\NestedItem, the class NestedItem will be stored in the folder Subfolder under the namespace. By default the namespace is App\DataTransfer. The command takes care if a class with the same name already exists in your directory. To force the command to overwrite this existing class (which is most unlikely in most cases) you can add the -f option in the make command. This is how this class would look like if you used the name MyFirstDatatransferItem:

<?php

namespace App\DataTransfer;

use AndrePolo\LaraDto\DataTransferItem;

class MyFirstDatatransferItem extends DataTransferItem
{
    // add your properties here
}

Another way is to simply create a new class by coppying the above example. This class has to extend AndrePolo\LaraDto\DataTransferItem

Create a new Instance of a datatransfer class

// simly with new up a class
$item = new ExampleItem();

// using laravels service container
$item = app()->make(ExampleItem::class);

// or if you registered your class with an alias
$item = app()->make('class_alias');

Creating a DataTransferCollection class

Also, use the command from this package:

php artisan ap-dto:make:collection

This command is creating a DataTransferCollection with the given name. Here you have the option -f again to force the command to create the new class. Every DataTransferCollection contains a list of DataTransferItems. You can automatically create the corresponding DataTransferItem by using the -i or --item option. With this option set the command creates an item with the same name as the collection but with the suffix Item.

For example if you pass the name MyFirstDatatransfer, a item with the name MyFirstDatatransferItem is created. Same if you pass MyFirstDatatransferCollection as the name

This is how the class would look like:

<?php

namespace App\DataTransfer;

use AndrePolo\LaraDto\DataTransferCollection;

class MyFirstDatatransferCollection extends DataTransferCollection
{
    protected $itemClass = MyFirstDatatransferItem::class;
}

Usage

You can fill it by passing the data directly to the constructor:

$item = new ExampleItem($data);

or just new it up and then call the fromArray method:

$item = new ExampleItem();
$item->fromArray($data);

Using this method fills all matching properties with the given values. The most important feature of this method is it automatically fills all nested instances of DataTransferItem or DataTransferCollection.

Setter and Getter

If you have a setter method defined for your property it will be automatically used in the fromArray method. You can overwrite this behavior globally
by set the config var use_setter to false or for a specific class by overwriting the useSetter method.

protected function useSetter()
{
    return false;
}

For getter methods it is working the same way as described above.

Strict mode

This is disabled by default. You can enable it globally by setting it to true in the config file. This option indicates whether filling items from array or json should only be possible when the corresponding values match to what is defined in the doc block. See config file for more information.

Schema

Mostly your data-transfer-objects will be nested structures. Therefore it might be usefull to quickly share a schema of your DTO to somebody you work with. You can call the schema method on your object to recieve the properties as an array. When you use the jsonSchema method, it will be a json object.