Eloquent Relationships - php

Question

Long story short: I'm building a "privacy" page where uses can chose what shows up and what does not show up on their profiles.
I am considering having a 1:m table user:privacy and just have entries for the keys they want private. If they don't exist they are public. Hope this makes sense.
Table would be user_privacy and will have 3 columns: id, user_id, privacy_key (string, i.e. email/phone/cell/etc)
Is there a way to simple query by the keys i will define that i can run to determine if the user has a key or not or do i have to go extra lengths to add a function to the user model to do this (trying to avoid, love the magic-ness of eloquent)
Basically i want to have a condition that sounds like "if ($user->privacy->email or $user->privacy->phone)"
Thanks and hope i was clear enough, lol

Answer 1

You could add a function to your user model:
public function isPrivate($attribute){
$privacyAttribute = $this->privacy->first(function($model) use ($attribute){
return $model->key == $attribute; // key being the column in the privacy model
});
return !is_null($privacyAttribute);
}
And then do your if statement this way:
if ($user->isPrivate('email') or $user->isPrivate('phone'))
Or a different implementation (usage is the same)
private $privacyAttributes = null;
public function isPrivate($attribute){
if($this->privacyAttributes == null){
$this->privacyAttributes = $this->privacy()->lists('key');
}
return in_array($attribute, $this->privacyAttributes);
}

Answer 2

User Model header:
/**
* Class User
* #package Interallmas
*/
class User extends Model implements AuthenticatableContract, CanResetPasswordContract {
/**
* #var null|array
*/
protected $privacy_keys = NULL;
Privacy Relationship:
/**
* #return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\HasMany
*/
public function privacy() {
return $this->hasMany('Interallmas\Privacy');
}
Privacy functions:
/**
* #return bool
*/
public function privacy_initialized() {
return ($this->privacy_keys !== NULL);
}
/**
* #return void
*/
public function initialize_privacy() {
if (!$this->privacy_initialized()) {
$this->privacy_keys = [];
foreach ($this->privacy as $privacy) {
$this->privacy_keys[] = $privacy->privacy_key;
}
}
}
/**
* #param $key
* #return bool
*/
public function isPrivate($key) {
$this->initialize_privacy();
return (in_array($key,$this->privacy_keys));
}
So: Whenever i access the isPrivate($key) method, i cache the result for the next use so i don't hit the server too hard - the function may be accessed once or more - i just query once, the first time. I believe for my needs, this is the best way to do it.

Answer 3

I think a simple count > 0 check should suffice. This requires you to have defined the relationship with the hasMany method for the User Model.
if (count($user->privacy) > 0) {
...
}