Laravel vs Symfony | Model Attributes - php

Question

I'm actually discovering Laravel (I've used symfony for years) and I face a situation where I don't know if I just couldn't find the right information or it is just the way to do in Laravel.
When creating a model in Symfony you put attributes in your model class. Actually these attributes represent the different columns of your table for the ORM.
Now in Laravel I see all people don't put theses attributes in the model class but in the migrations files. So a new developer who should contribute in a new project will have to look on database or migrations files. Which in my opinion is not the rule of an ORM : "let dev think class and not table"
Could somebody, please, put a light on this point?
Thanks

Answer 1

If you use PHPStorm (but it can work with other IDEs as well) there is an interesting composer package that can generate model documentation for you, in order to have autocompletion for attributes ad methods based on your migrations:
https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper
its three main methods:
php artisan ide-helper:generate creates phpDoc for Facades
php artisan ide-helper:model creates phpDoc for your model (you should relaunch it after every new migration)
php artisan ide-helper:meta creates phpstorm meta file
so, if you launch php artisan ide-helper:model it will add something similar to this
/**
* App\User
*
* #property-read \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection|\Spatie\Permission\Models\Permission[] $permissions
* #property-read \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection|\Spatie\Permission\Models\Role[] $roles
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User permission($permissions)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User role($roles, $guard = null)
* #property int $id
* #property string $name
* #property string $email
* #property \Illuminate\Support\Carbon|null $email_verified_at
* #property string $password
* #property string|null $remember_token
* #property \Illuminate\Support\Carbon|null $created_at
* #property \Illuminate\Support\Carbon|null $updated_at
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User whereCreatedAt($value)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User whereEmail($value)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User whereEmailVerifiedAt($value)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User whereId($value)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User whereName($value)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User wherePassword($value)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User whereRememberToken($value)
* #method static \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder|\App\User whereUpdatedAt($value)
* [...]
*/
So you have a phpDoc
and your IDE should be able to autocomplete your code like this: