Laravel 5.6 custom id with mutator reset counter everyday - php

Question

I use a mutator to create a custom id for my records to make it look like this:
yyyy-mm-dd-{sequence}
The sequence looks like this
00001
00002
...
So it's 5 digits and is just a counter.
I have 2 problems
1) I don't know how to create a counter in my mutator, I can do a for loop but I don't now how to make an infinte loop that resets when it's tomorrow.
2) I honestly have no idea how to make it reset every day.
My mutator:
public function setFunctionalIdAttribute($id)
{
$date = Carbon::now()->format("Y-m-d");
// I take an extremely large number here because there will never be so much records in 1 day.
for ($counter = 0; $counter <= 100000000000; $counter++) {
$counter = str_pad($counter, 5, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT);
}
$today = Carbon::today();
$tomorrow = Carbon::tomorrow();
if ($today = $tomorrow) {
$counter = 0;
}
$this->attributes['functional_id'] = $date . "-" . $counter;
}

Answer 1

Its hard to say it but, in the nicest possible way, your counter loop doesn't really make any sense, I'm sorry! I'd recommend getting rid of that entirely, or at least read the PHP docs on str_pad.
You also have a conditional statement that checks "is today tomorrow". That to me is a big red flag that the logic, in general, isn't correct.
Let's think through an alternative. You're essentially counting the number of records in a day, to use that as the ID. I'd suggest an approach similar to this:
public function setFunctionalIdAttribute()
{
// 1. Count how many records there are from today
// 2. Make an ID that is this number + 1
// 3. If need be, string pad left with 0's
}
1. Count how many records there are from today
Laravel has a handy whereDate function – from the docs (search for whereDate)
$count = DB::table('users')
->whereDate('created_at', Carbon::today()->toDateString())
->count();
So if we had 3 records made today, $count would be 3.
2. Make an ID that is this number + 1
$count ++;
3. If need be, string pad left with 0's
The PHP docs on str_pad are pretty terrible, lets just cover the basics:
str_pad($input, $length, $pad_string, $pad_type);
$input is the string you are padding
$length is the final length of the string (this is why your for loop was totally unnecessary)
$pad_string if the string length is less than $length, fill up the remaining space with this
$pad_type as you rightly had, is an optional flag to pad left
Your $input is the $count, your $length is 5, judging from your example, $pad_string is "0", and we keep PAD_LEFT.
$id = str_pad($count, 5, "0", PAD_LEFT)
I can't remember how to set an attribute through a mutator so just copying your example (I hope that's correct!) we get:
public function setFunctionalIdAttribute()
{
$count = DB::table('users') // Remember to change this to the correct table name
->whereDate('created_at', Carbon::today()->toDateString())
->count();
$count ++;
$id = str_pad($count, 5, PAD_LEFT)
$this->attributes['functional_id'] = $id;
}
Remember to only do this on create, as we don't want to increment this ID on every save.

Answer 2

I don't know the purpose of your code, but this will allways set "functional_id" to something like "2019-01-23-100000000001", since you are using the $counter variable out of your loop.
Your loop is looping trough without doing anything. (And why the hell are you looping till such a high number if you are not expecting more than 100000 entries?!?)
What you need is the previous counter you have set, ether from DB or somewhere else, but like this your code is not going to work.
In that way you could perform some check like
if ($dateOfLastEntry != Carbon::now()->format('Y-m-d')) {$counter = 1}
otherwise set $counterOfLastEntry + 1
not using that scary for-loop you are using
str_pad performed at the end
Maybe you give us a little more information how this should work, for what you are going to use that counter, and where you are going to store this data.

Answer 3

I know it is a old question, but for everybody that needs something like it for days to come, I made something that resolve the question.
public function Counter()
{
$today = Carbon::today();
$today_files = Shipment::whereDate('created_at', $today)->count();
$counter= $today_files;
if ($today_files != 0) {
$counter++;
} else {
$counter = 1;
}
return counter;
}```