How to use a protected property in an Eloquent model without Laravel trying to save it to the database

Question

In one of my models, I have an attribute named "slug". When the slug is changed, I need to record the original slug before updating it to the new one, so my model has a protected property "originalSlug". Before saving the model, I do something like this in my model:

protected $originalSlug;

public function customSave($newSlug){
   $this->originalSlug = $this->slug;
   $this->slug = $newSlug;
   return $this->save();
}

Then I have an event that does other tasks using that originalSlug after a successful save. The problem is Laravel is trying to save the originalSlug to the database though it isn't actually an attribute and doesn't have a database column. So it fails with the "Column not found" error.

What could I do to get Laravel to ignore that originalSlug property, or is there a better way I should be doing this?

Why don't you just raise the event before you call the save? — RobbieP
– RobbieP, Commented Sep 15, 2014 at 11:50
I only want the event to fire if the model has been successfully saved. — Chris
– Chris, Commented Sep 15, 2014 at 12:07
Yea you can raise the event, pass the old data as a DTO. Then only fire it after the model has saved successfully. This series might help: laracasts.com/series/commands-and-domain-events — RobbieP
– RobbieP, Commented Sep 15, 2014 at 12:13
Thanks for the info. I'll look into that series. It's a bit over my head at the moment, but it might very well be the best way to do it. — Chris
– Chris, Commented Sep 15, 2014 at 17:43

Jarek Tkaczyk · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-15 14:28:45Z

1

If you want Eloquent to ignore a property, it needs to be accessible to set, otherwise __set will be called and Eloquent will treat it as an attribute.
You can alternatively use mutator for this.

So here's what you need:

public $originalSlug;

public function customSave($newSlug){
   $this->originalSlug = $this->slug;
   $this->slug = $newSlug;
   return $this->save();
}

or:

protected $originalSlug;

public function customSave($newSlug){
   $this->originalSlug = $this->slug;
   $this->slug = $newSlug;
   return $this->save();
}

public function setOriginalSlugAttribute($value)
{
   $this->originalSlug = $value;
}

Then Eloquent will not set an originalSlug attribute , so it won't be saved to the db.

You can do that with events, like suggested in the comments, and I would suggest this way too.

answered Sep 15, 2014 at 14:28

Jarek Tkaczyk

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