PHP / Laravel - Saving an array to database

Question

I have a hard time understanding the basic attribute casting in Laravel.

I want to store some coordinates in my database:

$coordinates = [
     'x' => 100,
     'y' => 60,
     'h' => 250,
     'w' => 250,
];

To save the coordinates, I do this:

$field = StreamField::find(4);
$field->coordinates = $coordinates;
$field->save();

I have declared belows casts on my Field model:

 protected $casts = [
     'coordinates' => 'array'
 ];

When I then want to fetch the data, I do this:

$field = StreamField::find(4);
return $field->coordinates['x'];

In my migration, the coordinates column is created like this:

$table->json('coordinates')->nullable();

Now is this the correct way of doing it?

Answer 1

Yes, this is correct way of doing it. You can also save as XML as a string (whatever you prefer).

Altrought i would use getters and setters when saving coordinates in order to vertify input (if you need it). Because if any error occurs, the program would not write json but error (as a string).