Laravel Fractal Optional fields - php

Question

I am using fractal for my small project, here is my code:
public function transform(Series $series) {
return [
'id' => $series->id,
'title' => $series->title,
'url' => $series->url,
'description' => $series->description,
'thumbnail_hd' => $series->thumbnail_hd,
'thumbnail_wide' => $series->thumbnail_wide,
'views' => $series->views
];
}
I would like to make views (which is an int) optional and not return the views unless requested - since this field is based on a relationship and will increase the processing time.
I would like to use it as relationships (so i can include particular fields whenever I need to):
// in transformer
public function includeUser(Series $series) {
return $this->item($series->user, new UserTransformer);
}
// in controller
return fractal()
->item($series)
->parseIncludes(['user'])
->transformWith(new SeriesTransformer)
->toArray();
But just for an integer instead of a whole array of data. Is it possible using Fractal?

Answer 1

What you can do is the following
public function transform(Series $series) {
$return = [
'id' => $series->id,
'title' => $series->title,
'url' => $series->url,
'description' => $series->description,
'thumbnail_hd' => $series->thumbnail_hd,
'thumbnail_wide' => $series->thumbnail_wide,
];
if ($series->views > 0) {
$return['views'] = (int) $series->views;
}
return $return;
}
I wouldn't suggest doing this though. I would usually just return views as 0.
If you're worried about your DB performance, your app is going to have to count the views anyway to know if they're greater than 0.
If you worried about client side performance, this is not going to matter with a single key value pair.