Laravel Data Transfer Object

A simple and lightweight implementation of Data Transfer Objects (DTO) in Laravel with optional casting support.

Under the hood it implements Laravel's Castable interface with a Laravel custom cast that handles serializing between the DataTransferObject (or a compatible array) and your JSON database column.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require tailflow/dto

Usage

1. Create your DataTransferObject or DataTransferObjectCollection

namespace App\DataTransferObjects;

use Tailflow\DataTransferObjects\DataTransferObject;

class Address extends DataTransferObject
{
    public string $country;
    public string $city;
    public string $street;
}

namespace App\DataTransferObjects;

use Tailflow\DataTransferObjects\DataTransferObjectCollection;

class WorkAddresses extends DataTransferObjectCollection 
{
    public static function getItemClass(): string
    {
        return Address::class;
    }
}

(Optional) 2. Configure your Eloquent attribute casting:

Note that this should be a jsonb or json column in your database schema.

namespace App\Models;

use App\DataTansferObjects\Address;
use App\DataTansferObjects\WorkAddresses;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class User extends Model
{
    protected $casts = [
        'address' => Address::class,
        'work_addresses' => WorkAddresses::class,
    ];
}

3. Enjoy ~

Pass DTOs as arguments or use as return values, and get a nice autocompletion.

function getAddress(Address $originalAddress): Address 
{
    $address = new Address();
    $address->county = $originalAddress->country;
    $address->city = 'Tokyo';
    $address->street = '4-2-8 Shiba-koen';
  
    return $address;
}

// or

function getAddress(): Address 
{
    return new Address(
        [
            'country' => 'Japan',
            'city' => 'Tokyo',
            'street' => '4-2-8 Shiba-koen',
        ]
    );
}

On Eloquent models, you can now pass either an instance of your Address class, or even just an array with a compatible structure. It will automatically be cast between your class and JSON for storage and the data will be validated on the way in and out.

$workAddress = new Address();
$workAddress->country = 'Japan';
$workAddress->city = 'Osaka';

$user = User::create([
    // ...
    'address' => [
        'country' => 'Japan',
        'city' => 'Tokyo',
        'street' => '4-2-8 Shiba-koen',
    ],
    'work_addresses' => [
        $workAddress
    ]

]);

$residents = User::where('address->city', 'Tokyo')->get();

But the best part is that you can decorate your class with domain-specific methods to turn it into a powerful value object.

$user->address->toMapUrl();

$user->address->getCoordinates();

$user->address->getPostageCost($sender);

$user->address->calculateDistance($otherUser->address);

echo (string) $user->address;

License

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