Using Virtual Columns in Laravel - Accessors and Appends
What are virtual columns? While developing any web application sometimes we need virtual columns - columns don't actually exist in our DB table, but we drive them from other columns. Why we need them? For example, generally, we use first_name and last_name in the users table. But sometimes we also need user's complete name i.e. full_name . There is no benefit of saving full_name in user table if we have already first_name and last_name in the table OR even if we have full_name as a column in our table then there is no benefit of saving first_name and last_name in the table. So in a scenario like this, we prefer to use the virtual column. Using Virtual Columns in Laravel Considering the first case, in Laravel to get virtual column i.e. full_name from the users table will have Accessors. Accessors are methods defined automatically called by Eloquent when select is called on that particular column. Let take an example here: To get full_...