[Proposal] Classmap for MorphTo

[tomschlick]

If there is not currently, it would be great to have a class to (int/char) map for the MorphTo database ability.

This would save a ton of space in the db as each record would not have to store the full path of a class. It would also provide portability for moving classes around (changing namepace) without having to update the database records, just a mapping.

Ideally this map might be passed as a parameter on the morphTo method or read from a config file that may look like this

<?php

return array(
    1 => '\Domain\Folder\ClassOne',
    2 => '\Domain\Folder\ClassTwo',
);

[robclancy]

I don't get it. Why?

[tomschlick]

Mainly for disk space purposes. Some class names can get quite long and if you couple that with a large table (millions of rows) you will start to push the limits for something that is essentially an ENUM.

[patrickheeney]

It should also be faster to query on since its now an integer.

[JoostK]

I dig this, I guess it may indeed be beneficial to performance and definitely storage.

[GrahamCampbell]

Sweet. We are targeting Laravel 4.2 i assume?

[robclancy]

Oh I get it now, I was very tired last night. I don't use this system because I am not going to put class names in my database. Also because I created my own way of doing it before this feature was added to Laravel. I have a key, for example "user" and then I also have actions, for example "created" along with an ID to send obviously.
I also don't like the naming of things ending with 'able' with all this stuff. I want to call my columns 'relation' and 'relation_id'.

I won't use this, just my 2 cents on why though.

[taylorotwell]

I'm curious if this could be accomplished with a mutator on the model.

getFooableTypeAttribute and setFooableTypeAttribute. They would take class names but morph them for the internal $attributes array.

[bencorlett]

I like this. It also would play nice with inheritance, say you decided to subclass something down the track.

[bencorlett]

And Taylor's approach looks much nicer.

[tomschlick]

I can't believe I didn't think of the get/set attribute setup for this. I use those all the time. That also makes it easy to throw it into a trait to be reused over many models.

[taylorotwell]

So it worked?

[tomschlick]

I'm going to give it a shot now and see how it goes. Closing was a mistake but reopen if it doesnt work for some reason.

[cheelahim]

I did not find the way accessors/mutators could help to approach this issue. I see get_class() called explicitly in MorphOneOrMany constructor.

public function __construct(Builder $query, Model $parent, $type, $id, $localKey)
{
    $this->morphType = $type;
    $this->morphClass = get_class($parent);
    parent::__construct($query, $parent, $id, $localKey);
}