Eloquent ORM object relashionship

Question

i have two tables. School and Student.

When i fetch all Students

Student::all()->toJson();

I get a response with

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "school_id": 1,
    "name": "Jhon"
  }
]

But actually i would like to receive

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "school": {
        "id": 1
    },
    "name": "Jhon"
  }
]

I know i could do

Student::with(['school']);

But then it do an extra query to school table, which is not necessary, as i only need the school id, and not all other attributes.

Answer 1

You can override the toArray method in your model. The same thing also would be possible with toJson , but toArray gets called by toJson and in my opinion its nicer to do such stuff in toArray

class Student extends Eloquent {

    public function toArray($options = 0){
        $this->school = ['id' => $this->school_id];
        unset($this->school_id);

        return parent::toArray($options);
    }
}

Edit

To keep the model the same and only change to output (which is probably better)

public function toArray($options = 0){
    $array = parent::toArray($options);
    $array['school'] = ['id' => $array['school_id']];
    unset($array['school_id']);
    return $array;
}

Answer 2

You can use Illuminate\\Support\\Collection 's transform method for a more automated solution:

$students = Student::all();

$students->transform(function($el) {
    $el = $el->toArray();

    foreach ($el as $k => $v) {
        if (substr($k, -3) === '_id') {
            $el[substr($k, 0, -3)]['id'] = $v;

            unset($el[$k]);
        }
    }

    return $el;
});


return $students;

If you're going to call this multiple times (which I assume you will), the best would be to extend Illuminate\\Database\\Eloquent\\Collection and add a method to do that. Then edit the newCollection method on your base model to use your new extended class.