Eloquent Friendly Column Name - eloquent

Question

We're currently transitioning from one database to another. A table in our legacy database has column names that are less than ideal, for example:
some_crazy_name__xyz
In our new database, we'd like to have a column name like:
someCrazyName
In the short term, we have to work with data from our legacy database. At some point in the near future, we'd like to switch over without having to refactor all of our Eloquent code to query for different column names. For example:
$model = MyModel::where('someCrazyName', '=', 1);
I'm currently extending the Model class, where all implementing models provide a map of terrible names to friendly names:
class MyModel extends BaseModel {
$columnMap = array(
'someCrazyName' => 'some_crazy_name__xyz'
);
}
This works well where I can use __get and __set in BaseModel to lookup properties in my map, for example:
$myModel = new MyModel;
// ...
echo $myModel->someCrazyName;
However, this obviously doesn't work well with queries without having to always use my map to look up column names. I'm wondering if it's possible without having to override all of the methods within Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model, Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder and Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder that deal with columns, where the underlying query that is built always maps to the correct column? Then after we transition databases, we can remove that one piece of code rather then remove potentially thousands of column name mappings.

Answer 1

This is what you need: https://github.com/jarektkaczyk/eloquence/wiki/Mappable
It's not only for mapping badly_named_columns to something_useful, but also can be used for relational mappings:
// simple aliasing
User::where('cool_name', 'value') // where badName = ?
// relations, eg. User hasOne Profile
User::where('first_name', 'Jon') // search through related profiles table
// and obviously mutators:
$user->first_name == $user->profile->first_name
$user->cool_name = 'Jon' // becomes $user->badName = 'value'
$user->cool_name; // 'Jon'

Answer 2

One way to do it would be with accessors.
For example, in MyModel you could define an accessor for the some_crazy_name__xyz column like this:
public function getSomeCrazyNameAttribute()
{
return $this->attributes['some_crazy_name__xyz'];
}
You can then transparently refer to that column with $mymodel->someCrazyName. You can also define a mutator to set the value.
Admittedly, this may not be the best solution if you have MANY values like this. But it does have one important benefit: later on, if you refactor your database so that the column some_crazy_name__xyz is actually called someCrazyName, all you need to do is remove that function from your model. And, to my mind at least, it's simpler than trying to override a bunch of methods on the various classes involved.
And unfortunately, it doesn't adequately address the use of column names in queries. For that, you might want to look at the repository pattern. But in any event, it looks like there's going to be a lot of coding involved.
Finally, you haven't mentioned what database you're using. If it's MySQL, it is possible to create updatable and insertable views. Using a view, you could simply map old column names to new, and point your Eloquent model at the view instead of a table. Other database servers may provide similar functionality.