laravel 4.2 model mutators

Question

I am working on a notification system at the moment. The problem I am having at the moment, is that all notifications are impersonal.

What I would like is to get notifications saving to the database that have the correct personalisation language, so for example, I currently have a notification that reads like this,

Joe Bloggs added Billy Joel as a project manager.

What I would like is for the notification to go to every that is not Billy Joel, but for Billy Joel I want the following, to be sent

Joe Bloggs added you as a project manager

Currently I save my notifications like this for the projects managers on the sync of the pivot table,

$notification = new Notification;
    $notification->withURI($organisation->slug);
    $notification->withIsNotification(1);
    $notification->regarding($organisation);
    $notification->user_id = ResourceServer::getOwnerId();
    $notification->withType('updated');
    //die(print_r($changes));
    foreach($changes['attached'] as $k => $v) {
        //Loop through each new attachment to the pivot
        //look for who the attachement is from the user table and then
        //add the final notification details and fire the deliver method
        $addedUser = User::find($v);
        $addedUserName = $addedUser->first_name . " " . $addedUser->last_name;
        $notification->withBody($notifcationSenderName . " added " . $addedUserName . " to the organisation " . $organisation->name);
        $notification->deliver($notifyUsers);
    }

I was wondering that as I am querying the User from my database through it's model, would I be able to use model mutators to either return the users first and second name, if there does not need to be a personal notification and if it does then return "You". Is this possible with mutators and if so how?

Answer 1

While I'm not endorsing this approach, you sure can do it in an accessor:

public function getNameAttribute()
{
    if (Auth::id() == $this->id) return 'you';

    return "{$this->first_name} {$this->last_name}";
}