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Laravel DTO

A strongly typed Data Transfer Object for Laravel without magic for PHP 8.0+

This package extends the functionality of bssphp/DTO to provide more narrow usecases for Laravel applications.

Laravel-DTO serves as an intermediate and reusable layer between request input & validation and model attribute population.

Contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • Validation
  • Populate models
  • Populate DTO from request
  • Combined usage
• Type casting
• Best practices
• Testing

Installation

Usage

All data objects must extend the bssphp\laraveldto\AbstractModelData class.

Validation

When attaching the available validation rules and even built-in rules instances.

This will throw a Illuminate\Validation\ValidationException if any rule does not pass.

Populate Models

You can attach a model to any DTO using the #[ForModel(Model::class)] attribute. To associate DTO properties with Model attributes, you need to attach the #[ModelAttribute()] attribute to each property. If no parameter is passed to the #[ModelAttribute] attribute, DTO uses the property name itself.

Create DTO and store to model

Attributes saved in Person model

Note: You can also pass an existing model to the toModel() method.

Note: When passing no existing model to the toModel() method, default values declared in the DTO will be populated. If a model is passed as argument toModel($model) default values will not override existing model attributes.

Populate DTO from request input data

When attaching the #[RequestAttribute] attribute, DTO uses the property name itself.

The controller

Request input data

The PersonData DTO instance

Combined usage

Of course all those attributes start to make sense if used together. You can attach all attributes separately of make use of the #[ValidationRule] attributes.

Both properties in the following example behave exactly the same. Use as you prefer.

Request input data

The controller

Nested data

In some cases you also want to create realted models with a single HTTP call. In this case you can make use of the #[NestedModelData(NestedData::class)] which will populate the DTO property with n instances of the defined DTO.

Note that we will not attach an #[ModelAttribute] attribute to the $address DTO property since it should not be set to a model attribute.

All attributes attached to the nested DTO will just work as expected.

Request input data

The controller

Type Casting

Type casts will convert any given value to a specified type.

Built-in type casts

CastToDate

The #[CastToDate] attribute will respect your customly defined date class from Date::use(...). You can also specify a custom date class to be used by passing the date class name as single argument #[CastToDate(MyDateClass::class)].

Custom type casts

You can declare custom type cast attributes by simply implementing the CastInterface interface and attaching an attribute.

Best practices

Make sure to add a @method PHPDoc comment like shown below to allow IDE and static analyzer support when calling the toModel() method.

TODO

• [x] Allow array validation rules field.* & Map into nested DTO
• [x] Add correct validation exception error messages from nested fields
• [x] Pass existing model to toModel() method
• [x] Create DTO from existing model
• [ ] Only run validation rules if data provided from request

Testing

PHPUnit

PHPStan

Authors

• Roman Zipp