Settings Property Bag

This is a property bag for handling settings objects. This also has integration with Laravel database models out of the box.

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require humans/settings

Usage

A settings bag is a class where you can store your settings that can have fallback values if no explicit values where set. (i.e. persistence)

use Humans\Settings\Setings;

class UserSettings extends Settings
{
    protected $defaults = [
        'notifications' => [
            'sms' => true,
            'email' => true,
        ],
    ];
}

There are two different ways to get a value from the settings bag.

get($settings, $default = null)

(new UserSettings)->get('notifications'); 
// => ['sms' => true, 'email' => true]

(new UserSettings)->get('notifications.sms');
// => true

(new UserSettings)->get('notifications.push', false);
// => false

Another is chaining public properties.

(new UserSettings)->notifications;
// => ['sms' => true, 'email' => true]

(new UserSettings)->notifications->sms;
// => true

To get all the values from the settings bag.

(new UserSettings)->all();

Overriding the default values

Now that we can set values, we want to apply the persisted data to our default settings.

$userSettingsFromDatabase = [
    'notifications' => [
        'sms' => false,
	  ]
];

$settings = new UserSettings($userSettingsFromDatabase);

$settings->all();
# => [
#        'notifications' => [
#            'sms'   => false, <-- using the values from the database,
#            'email' => true,
#        ],
#    ]

Somtimes, it's a hassle storing array values in the database:

• The database might not support it.
• We don't want to do an overly complex database via relational key value stuff.

You can instead store your nested settings values via dot notation and this package will destructure the value into a nested array.

$userSettingsFromDatabase = [
    'notifications.sms' => false,
];

$settings = new UserSettings($userSettingsFromDatabase);

$settings->all();
# => [
#        'notifications' => [
#            'sms'   => false, <-- assigned via dot notation.
#            'email' => true,
#        ],
#    ]

Casting

There are times that the values that we pull out the database don't map to the actual data types we want them to be. For that we have a $casts attribute to handle the mapping for all the primitives we need.

class UserSettings extends Settings
{
    protected $defaults = [
        'notifications' => [
            'sms'   => 1,
            'email' => 1,
        ],
    ];
  
    protected $casts = [
        'notifications.sms'   => 'boolean',
        'notifications.email' => 'boolean',
    ];
}

(new UserSettings)->get('notifications.sms');
# => true

(new UserSettings)->get('notifications.email');
# => true

The only two properties available right now are: boolean and json.

BUT DON'T FRET! You can either help us out by adding more cast implementations or even make your own from the settings class! (The code is the same).

Adding custom casts

To add custom casts, in your custom settings class (or even a parent class for all your settings classes), create a method prefixed with as.

class UserSettings extends Settings
{
    protected $defaults = [
        'age'            => '27',
        'hours_of_sleep' => '8',
    ];
  
    protected $casts = [
        'age' => 'integer',
    ];
  
    protected function asInteger($age)
    {
        return (int) $age;
    }
}

(new UserSettings)->get('age');
# => 27

(new UserSettings)->get('hours_of_sleep');
# => '8'

Laravel Integration

Out of the box, we try to help the setup to a minimal for Laravel projects. After installing via composer, public the config file and migrations.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Humans\Settings\Laravel\ServiceProvider"

Run our new settings table migration.

php artisan migrate

To create the settings file:

php artisan settings:make UserSettings

And finally, add our settings trait to the model. The trait will automatically look for the settings file in the namespace of your config appended with the word Settings.

So if we have a User.php, by default it will look for the App\Settings\UserSettings class.

use Humans\Settings\Laravel\HasSettings;

class User extends Model
{
    use HasSettings;
}

class Workspace extends Model
{
    use HasSettings;
}

To change the class location, you can change the getSettingsClass method in your model.

use Humans\Settings\Laravel\HasSettings;

class User extends Model
{
    use HasSettings;

    protected function getSettingsClass()
    {
        return \App\Models\Settings\AccountSettings::class;
    }
}

use Humans\Settings\Laravel\HasSettings;

class Workspace extends Model
{
    use HasSettings;

    public function getSettingsClass()
    {
        return \App\Models\Settings\AccountSettings::class;
    }
}

With that, you can now access your values via the settings public property.

User::first()->settings->notifications->sms
# => true

Saving to the database

To save a single value to the database.

User::first()->settings->set('notifications.sms', false);

To save multiple values at the same time:

User::first()->settings->update([
    'notifications' => [
        'sms'   => false,
        'email' => false,
    ],
]);

# or using dot notation
User::first()->settings->update([
    'notifications.sns'   => false,
    'notifications.email' => false,
]);