Laravel View Models

Laravel View Models in Laravel.

Have you ever made a controller where you had to do a lot of work to prepare variables to be passed to a view? You can move that kind of work to a so called view model. In essence, view models are simple classes that take some data, and transform it into something usable for the view.

Forked from spatie/laravel-view-models. You can extending your view models in Service Provider.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require fvsoft/laravel-view-models

Usage

A view model is a class where you can put some complex logic for your views. This will make your controllers a bit lighter. You can create a view model by extending the provided FVSoft\ViewModels\ViewModel.

class PostViewModel extends ViewModel
{
    public $indexUrl = null;

    public function __construct(User $user, Post $post = null)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
        $this->post = $post;

        $this->indexUrl = action([PostsController::class, 'index']);
    }

    public function post(): Post
    {
        return $this->post ?? new Post();
    }

    public function categories(): Collection
    {
        return Category::canBeUsedBy($this->user)->get();
    }
}

And used in controllers like so:

class PostController
{
    public function create()
    {
        $viewModel = new PostViewModel(
            Auth::user()
        );

        return view('posts.create', $viewModel);
    }

    public function edit(Post $post)
    {
        $viewModel = new PostViewModel(
            Auth::user(),
            $post
        );

        return view('posts.edit', $viewModel);
    }
}

In a view you can do this:

<input type="text" value="{{ $post->title }}" />
<input type="text" value="{{ $post->body }}" />

<select>
    @foreach ($categories as $category)
        <option value="{{ $category->id }}">{{ $category->name }}</option>
    @endforeach
</select>

<a href="{{ $indexUrl }}">Back</a>

All public methods and properties in a view model are automatically exposed to the view. If you don't want a specific method to be available in your view, you can ignore it.

class PostViewModel extends ViewModel
{
    protected $ignore = ['ignoredMethod'];

    // …

    public function ignoredMethod() { /* … */ }
}

All PHP's built in magic methods are ignored automatically.

View models as responses

It's possible to directly return a view model from a controller. By default, a JSON response with the data is returned.

class PostController
{
    public function update(Request $request, Post $post)
    {
        // …

        return new PostViewModel($post);
    }
}

This approach can be useful when working with AJAX submitted forms.

It's also possible to return a view directly:

class PostController
{
    public function update(Request $request, Post $post)
    {
        // …

        return (new PostViewModel($post))->view('posts.edit');
    }
}

Note that when the Content-Type header of the request is set to JSON, this approach will also return JSON data instead of a rendered view.

Exposing view functions

View models can expose functions which require extra parameters.

class PostViewModel extends ViewModel
{
    public function formatDate(Carbon $date): string
    {
        return $date->format('Y-m-d');
    }
}

You can use these functions in the view like so:

{{ $formatDate($post->created_at) }}

Making a new view model

The package included an artisan command to create a new view model.

php artisan make:view-model HomepageViewModel

This view model will have the App\ViewModels namespace and will be saved in app/ViewModels.

or into a custom namespace, say, App\Blog

php artisan make:view-model "Blog/PostsViewModel"

This view model will have the App\Blog\ViewModels namespace and will be saved in app/Blog/ViewModels.

Extending

The macro method allows add more variables to view models without edit a file. Example in Providers/AppServiceProvider.php:

use App\ViewModels\PostViewModel;

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    public function boot()
    {
        PostViewModel::macro('relatedPosts', function () {
            return 'Some posts';
        });
    }
}

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Credits

• Brent Roose
• Đinh Quốc Hân

License

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