Laravel eloquent query using local scope with conditional statement and arguments - php

Question

I've written the following function in my Car model that does the following:
Gets the related reservations based on two dates(pickup/dropoff)
Checks if the amount of these reservations are equal or exceed the quantity of the car
Finally returns a boolean depending on the output
/**
* Custom Functions
*/
public function isAvailableFor($from, $to) {
$reservationsCount = $this->reservations->where('pickup_date', '>=', $from)->where('dropoff_date', '<=', $to)->count();
if($reservationsCount >= $this->quantity) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
The function is working as expected but I want to implement this in a more elegant way using local scopes so I can actually use it efficiently when querying the Car model in my controllers but I can't find the correct way to do it and my code becomes a complete mess.
For example I have the following scope that I am using by just typing Car::active()->get();
/**
* Scopes
*/
public function scopeActive($query)
{
return $query->where('status', 'active');
}
The main problem is the count() function that doesn't let me implement my function in a scope-way or at least I am not that experienced to come up with a solution.
Thanks in advance.
Update
As correctly pointed by OsDev since my function returns a boolean it can not be implemented directly in the scope function. I can alternatively do this in my scope function but I guess it is pretty much an overkill:
public function scopeAvailable($query, $from, $to) {
$excludedId = array();
$cars = Car::whereHas('reservations')->get();
foreach($cars as $car) {
if(!$car->isAvailableFor($from, $to)) {
array_push($excludedId, $car->id);
}
}
return $query->whereNotIn('id', $excludedId);
}

Answer 1

You have to return the $query instead the count result because that way you don't break the Query Builder chain
You can't combine scopes and Model functions because scopes are supposed to return the $query builder object and in that example, your function is returning a boolean.
You can do something like this
/**
* Scopes
*/
public function scopeIsAvailableFor($query,$from,$to)
{
return $query->where('pickup_date', '>=', $from)->where('dropoff_date', '<=', $to);
}
Then you can chain it and call count if you want
$count = Car::active()->isAvailableFor('2020-05-03','2020-05-06')->count();
Maybe you can wrap your new scope into your model method
public function isAvailableFor($from, $to) {
$reservationsCount = $this->reservations->isAvailableFor($from,$to)->count();
return !$reservationsCount >= $this->quantity;
}