Laravel Schemaless Attributes Package

With the Laravel Schemaless Attributes Laravel package by Spatie, you can add schemaless attributes to Eloquent relational models. The readme of the package sums up this package perfectly:

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could have a bit of the spirit of NoSQL available in Eloquent? This package does just that. It provides a trait that when applied on a model, allows you to store arbitrary values in a single JSON column.

Since this package requires a database with support for json columns, you will need to use a database like MySQL 5.7 or higher.

You get and set schemaless attributes the same way you set attributes:

$yourModel->extra_attributes->name = 'value';
$yourModel->extra_attributes->name; // Returns 'value'

To save schemaless attributes, save the model:

// Persists both normal and schemaless attributes
$yourModel->save();

One question I had when I started checking out this package was querying the model’s extra attributes:

$yourModel->withExtraAttributes([
    'name' => 'value',
    'name2' => 'value2
])->get();

To get going with this package you install it with composer:

composer require spatie/laravel-schemaless-attributes

Next, you’ll need to add the following to a model migration that you want JSON attributes:

Schema::table('your_models', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->schemalessAttributes('extra_attributes');
});

Check the documentation for the additional steps you need to prepare a model for schemaless data. If you plan to use schemaless data on multiple models, the documentation shows you how to create a trait for the extra attributes accessor and scope.

This package provides an excellent way to add, access, and persist schemaless data inside a relational database, with convenience methods around working with JSON data. Check out the GitHub repository for the full documentation and source code.