How to be more Laravel in a CRUD app? - php

Question

This is a question about how to create a better application with awesome Laravel. I want to create a CRUD application with multiple forms with user's permissions.
Details:
View. I have 3 forms, for example lets call it cat, turtle and dog. The most important is that they have different number of fields.
Here are forms
Controller. After user filled in the form and pressed save button the controller in the game. All of us know that the thinner controller is the better it is. But I use construction like this:
switch($type)
{
case '1':
//form validation -> move to model
//if all have passed that insert into database
//Show user a message
break;
case '2':
//form validation -> move to model
//if all have passed that insert into database
//Show user a message
break;
//.....
default:
//show message
break;
}
Where variable type equals form's type which has been filled in by a user. But as you can see now the controller is pretty big, and I don't like it. What the best way to do this?
Model.
I have 4 table, dogs_data, turtle_data, cat_data where I store all data from forms and pets_data where I store different metadata about pets above. How does it work? After validation passed insert data into one of these tables and get ID of this insertion. Then create the record in pets_data and insert the ID as pet_id and also insert table_type which will be required to get information from database. I think that it is very weird way to work with database. Here is table's visualisation.
Another problem is - show data. For example user has no permissions to edit data or delete records, but admin can remove, updated and see a lot of data from database. Should I create another controller like AdminController and write there another method which display information only for admin?
My application now:
WebSiteController - display website
AdminController - admin page, there is a method which generate special page to view pets.
UserController - users control panel, there is also method which generate page to view pets, but special for user.
And I think to create something like this
AuthController - special for login\registration\activation\etc
PetsController - create\delete\update\etc and also view in two variation: for user and admin. And idea is to create a method getShowPets($pet_id) (important it is only id from pets_data, not the pets_id) then get permission of the user and generate page.
And so on, I want to re-write my application use DRY rule
So I will very happy if you can give me some good tips about this project.

Answer 1

It looks like you are setting up a polymorphic relation, in which case, I would make everything separate meaning you'd have a model for Cat, Dog, Turtle, and PetData. You'd have controllers for CatController, DogController, and TurtleController. And you'd have a Cat form, a Dog form and a Turtle form, each that also contain inputs for the data you require for your pet_info table.
To create the polymorphic relation, your pet_data table will require some changes. Just change the table column to pet_type. Laravel expects a certain name for this column and for its contents to be the name of a model rather than the name of your table.
Setting up the models for these is very easy, I'll do the PetData and the Dog one to get started.
class Dog extends Eloquent
{
protected $table = 'dogs_data';
protected $timestamps = false;
public function petData()
{
return $this->morphMany('PetData', 'pet');
}
}
class PetData extends Eloquent
{
protected $timestamps = false;
public function pet()
{
return $this->morphTo();
}
}
Can read more about this here... http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#polymorphic-relations
The idea of having separate models/controllers for everything might seem like a lot of work, but it goes a long way when trying to maintain or add additional animals to your app because you should rarely have to modify production code, taking away the possibility of introducing more bugs when trying to add enhancements to your website.
Now it becomes very easy to save a pet and related pet data without having to worry about the pet_id and pet_type in the pet_data table, Laravel will take care of that for you. The function on your dog controller might look like this...
class DogController extends BaseController
{
public function save()
{
$dog = new Dog;
$dog->name = Input::get('name');
$dog->age = Input::get('age');
$dog->save();
$pet_data = new PetData;
$pet_data->color = Input::get('color');
$dog->petData()->save($pet_data);
}
}
As far as creating another controller for admins, I would say yes, do that. It never hurts to keep parts of your website that you consider different in different files. It not only helps with organization, but again, with separation of concerns, which you should probably read more about.
There are also some fantastic 3rd party options for managing roles. I've used zizaco/entrust before and found it very easy to manage. It might make your life a lot easier when trying to manage who can do what on your web app.