Laravel moving Controller logic to a Model - php

Question

I'm at a stage where I'm refactoring my code, and I've come across an interesting conundrum.
In my ArticleController I have a bog standard store method for storing an article in my articles database table.
/**
* Store a newly created resource in storage.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function store(StoreArticle $request)
{
$article = new Article();
$defauultPublished = "draft";
$IntranetOnly = false;
$isFeatured = false;
$isFeatured = ($request->get('featuredArticle') == "1" ? true : false);
$IntranetOnly = ($request->get('IntranetOnly') == "1" ? true : false);
$article->title = $request->get('title');
$article->slug = str_slug($request->get('title'));
$article->author = $request->get('author');
$article->category = $request->get('category');
$article->excerpt = $request->get('excerpt');
$article->content = clean($request->get('content'));
$article->featuredImage = $request->get('featuredImage');
$article->featuredVideo = $request->get('featuredVideo');
$article->readingTime = $this->calculateReadTime($request);
$article->featuredArticle = $isFeatured;
$article->IntranetOnly = $IntranetOnly;
$article->published = $defauultPublished;
$article->save();
$article->handleTags($request);
return redirect('editable/news-and-updates')->with('success', 'Article has been added');
}
I also have a function for calculating read time:
/**
* Calculate a rough reading time for an articles by counting the words present
* These words are then divided by a given reading time and rounded to the nearest whole number
* Reading time average is roughly 267 words per minute, so this also accounts for relatively slow readers
*
* #param Request $request
* #return void
*/
public function calculateReadTime(Request $request)
{
$readingSpeed = 200;
$title = str_word_count(strip_tags($request->get('title')));
$excerpt = str_word_count(strip_tags($request->get('excerpt')));
$content = str_word_count(strip_tags($request->get('content')));
$words = ($title + $excerpt + $content);
$minutes = round($words / $readingSpeed);
return $minutes . ' minute' . ($minutes == 1 ? '' : 's');
}
My question is should these methods be moved to the Article model?

Answer 1

Controller should be as slim as possible. Following a resourceful approach (which you seem to be doing), the store() method in your ArticleController class should strive as much as possible to look like this:
class ArticleController extends Controller
{
public function store(CreateArticleRequest $request)
{
$article = Article::create($request->validated());
// Redirect with success message
}
}
Here, your request data is validated in a form request class before it even reaches the controller method; and then an Article model instance is created from that validated data.
A couple of other notes…
Statements like ($data['featuredArticle'] == "1" ? true : false) are overly verbose. You’re doing a condition check which will evaluate to true or false; you don’t need to manually return each value in a ternary operator. So this could be slimmed down to $data['featuedArticle'] == '1'. Furthermore, if you pass a value of 0 by default, then you could just get rid of the check entirely. If in your Blade template you put a hidden input before your checkbox:
<input type="hidden" name="featuredArticle" value="0" />
<input type="checkbox" name="featuredArticle" value="1" />
Then 1 will be send if the checkbox is checked (as it overrides the hidden input’s value, or 0 sent if the checkbox isn’t checked).
Also, try to stick to Laravel conventions to make your life easier. If you use snake_case for your input names, then it just makes life easier matching them up to model attribute and table column names. So use featured_article, have an attribute in your model with the same name, which maps to a database column with the same name again. This allows you to do shorthand calls like create() (as per my controller example) and update().
Finally, methods like calculating reading time definitely belong on your model. Models represent something in your application. It therefore follows that you can do things with your models. Calculating the time to read an Article model instance therefore lends itself to having a calculateReadingTime() method on the Article model.
A bit long-winded, but hopefully there should be some helpful pointers for you in the above. I’ve been working on Laravel projects for around five years now and have found that this approach and conventions is what works best.

Answer 2

Your controller's store article is fine, because it fills your article instance based on request data. It could use some refactoring and you could encapsulate more logic into your Article (for example, assign slug field inside your Article model whenever title is changed and so on).
But the line $article->handleTags($request); is a suspect, because your model should never operate with requests - it will quickly polute your model code with very specialized dependencies that you don't want (what happens when you receive your tags from cache and don't have a request instance? What happens if other type of request contains tags differently? and so on). Your model shouldn't have knowledge about requests or other parts of your app. Your controller is connecting the dots between them, so make sure your handleTags takes some basic abstract types/structures as a parameter (for example, an array) and make sure your controller takes and transforms data from request accordingly before feeding it to your article.
As for your calculateReadTime dilemma, it should definitely be inside your model. Think about it this way - do you have everything you need to calculate read time of your article inside your Article model? The answer is yes, it's a property of an article object, doesn't matter if you store it in DB or calculate it off other properties. Make getReadTime method. You don't want a controller to compute something about your model because it will tie that logic to a specific place in your app which is bad (what happens when you need to calculate read time of an article in other controller? Other model? and so on).
Make sure you read about has and is concepts regarding object-oriented design, it will help you immensely.

Answer 3

I think you should move those assignments to a Service Class. You could also go ahead and create a repository class. This would thus become your code structure:
Controller -> Service -> Repository -> Model.
Doing this $article = new Article(); is bad. You will have a had time when writing a test for your controller store method.
I would suggest you do this:
Create a Service class, say ArticleService.php. Define a store method in it.
ArticleService.php
use Article;
class ArticleService {
protected $article;
public function __construct(Article $article){
$this->article = $article;
}
public function store(array $data){
$defauultPublished = "draft";
$IntranetOnly = false;
$isFeatured = false;
$isFeatured = ($data['featuredArticle'] == "1" ? true : false);
$IntranetOnly = ($data['IntranetOnly'] == "1" ? true : false);
$this->article->title = $data['title'];
$this->article->slug = str_slug($data['title']);
$this->article->author = $data['author'];
$this->article->category = $data['category'];
$this->article->excerpt = $data['excerpt'];
$this->article->content = clean($data['content']);
$this->article->featuredImage = $data['featuredImage'];
$this->article->featuredVideo = $data['featuredVideo'];
$this->article->readingTime = $data['reading_time'];
$this->article->featuredArticle = $isFeatured;
//Capital letter I? You should be consistent with your naming convention
$this->article->IntranetOnly = $IntranetOnly;
$this->article->published = $defauultPublished;
if($this->article->save()){
$this->article->handleTags($request);
return true;
}
return false;
}
}
And your Controller now becomes:
class ArticleController{
protected $articleService;
public function __construct(ArticleService $articleService){
$this->articleService = $articleService;
}
public function store(Request $request){
//Some Validation Logic
$readingTime = $this->calculateReadTime($request)
$data = array_merge(['reading_time' => $readTime], $request->all());
return $this->articleService->store($request->all());
}
}
I also see that you are not validating the incoming Request. You should always do that because you can/should never trust your users to always provide/input the right data. It is your duty to force them to do that. e.g I as your user might decide to enter my name in your email field. If you don't validate that data, you will end up with wrong data.
There is also the issue of individually assigning your request parameter to their corresponding Model attribute. I decided to leave it that way so as not to overload you with information.
In summary, just take a look at the following resources for more insight.
https://laravel.com/docs/5.1/quickstart-intermediate
https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/validation
In short, read up the whole Laravel documentation! Goodluck!