kabooodle / eloquent-sti

Single Table Inheritance for Laravel's Eloquent ORM

Eloquent Single Table Inheritance

Single Table Inheritance for Laravel's Eloquent ORM.

Install

Via Composer

$ composer require jonnypickett/eloquent-sti

After updating composer, add the ServiceProvider to the providers array in config/app.php

JonnyPickett\EloquentSTI\ServiceProvider::class,

Usage

Use the SingleTableInheritance trait in any Eloquent model to take advantage of Single Table Inheritance in Laravel with the model's subclasses.

A table taking advantage of Single Table Inheritance needs to store subclass names. By default, this package uses a field named subclass_name, so add this field, or the field name you choose (configuration is shown later), to your table.

Schema::table('animals', function(Blueprint $table)
{
    $table->string('subclass_name');
}

Once this field is added to your database table, you will need to add the SingleTableInheritance trait to the parent model, and add the subclass name field to its $fillable array

class Animal extends Model
{
    use SingleTableInheritance;
    
    protected $table = 'animals';
    
    protected $fillable = [
        'subclass_name',
        ...
    ];
    
    protected $noise = '';
    
    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function speak()
    {
        return $this->noise;
    }
}

Now just extend the parent model with any child models

class Dog extends Animal
{
    protected $noise = 'ruff';
}
    
class Cat extends Animal
{
    protected $noise = 'meow';
}

That's it. Now the entries in your table, animals for our example, will always be returned as an instance of a specific subclass. When retrieving a collection, the collection will be a collection of various subclass instances.

Configuration

By default, the subclass names will be stored in a field named subclass_name. This can be changed project wide by updating your .env file

ELOQUENT_STI_SUBCLASS_FIELD=your_subclass_field_name_here

or publishing and updating the package configuration file

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="JonnyPickett\EloquentSTI\ServiceProvider"

// app/config/eloquent-sti.php
<?php

return [

    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Default Subclass Field
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | Subclass class names will be stored and retrieved from this field.
    | This can be overridden in specific classes by setting the
    | protected property $subclassFiled to a different value
    | in the class definition.
    |
    */

    'subclass_field' => env('ELOQUENT_STI_SUBCLASS_FIELD', 'your_subclass_field_name_here'),
];

or can be changed on a per model basis by adding a $subclassNameField property to your parent model

class Animal extends Model
{
    protected $subclassFieldName = 'your_subclass_field_name_here'
}

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.