Enhance user model

Question

I'm trying to extend the User model with another table (Profile) to get the profile picture, location, etc.

Can I override the User model's index() function to do this?

Current model code:

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasApiTokens, HasFactory, Notifiable;

    protected $fillable = [
        'name',
        'email',
        'password',
        'user_group'
    ];

    protected $hidden = [
        'password',
        'remember_token',
    ];

    protected $casts = [
        'email_verified_at' => 'datetime',
    ];
}

Answer 1

What you want to do is create a relationship between the User model and the new Profile model. To do this, you first need to create a model Profile and its associated Tabble profiles

php artisan make:model Profile --migration

There should be a file named 2022_11_28_223831_create_profiles_table.php in database\migrations

Now you need to add a foreign key to indicate which user this profile belongs to.

public function up()
{
    Schema::create('profiles', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->id();
        // $table->string('path_to_picture')
        // user id
        $table->foreignId('user_id')->constrained()->onDelete('cascade');
        $table->timestamps();
    });
}

Now add the following functions in your user model

public function profile()
{
    return $this->hasOne(Profile::class);
}

In your profile model

public function user()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
}

Run php artisan migrate and everything should work as expected

If you want to test whether the relationship works as expected, create a new test case

php artisan make:test ProfileUserRelationTest

attests\Feature\ProfileUserRelationTest.php

<?php

namespace Tests\Feature;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithFaker;
use Tests\TestCase;
use App\Models\User;
use App\Models\Profile;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Hash;

class ProfileUserRelationTest extends TestCase
{
    use RefreshDatabase;
    public function test_the_relation_between_user_and_profile_works()
    {
        $user = User::create([
            'name' => 'John Doe',
            'email' => 'jd@example.com',
            'password' => Hash::make('password'),
        ]);
        $profile = new Profile();
        $profile->user_id = $user->id;
        $profile->save();

        $this->assertEquals($user->id, $profile->user->id);
        $this->assertEquals($user->name, $profile->user->name);
        $this->assertEquals($profile->id, $user->profile->id);
    }
}

Now you can run php artisan test to see if everything is fine.

CautionThis will refresh your database! So don't test in production.

The output should be like this

PASS  Tests\Unit\ExampleTest
  ✓ that true is true

   PASS  Tests\Feature\ExampleTest
  ✓ the application returns a successful response

   PASS  Tests\Feature\ProfileUserRelationTest
  ✓ the relation between user and profile works

  Tests:  3 passed
  Time:   0.35s

Learn more about relationships in Laravel: https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/eloquentrelationships

Learn more about migration: https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/migrations

alternative plan

$user = User::create([
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'email' => 'jd@example.com',
    'password' => Hash::make('password'),
]);

$user->profile()->create(...); // replace the ... with the things you want to insert you dont need to add the user_id since it will automatically added it. It will still work like the one above.