Model Casts are moving to methods in Laravel 11

Model casts in Laravel 10 are defined via the $casts array property. However, in Laravel 11, you can define a casts() method, which opens the possibility to use static methods on built-in casters as well as define static methods for custom casters:

use App\Enums\UserOption;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Casts\AsEnumCollection;
 
// ...
 
/**
 * Get the attributes that should be cast.
 *
 * @return array<string, string>
 */
protected function casts(): array
{
    return [
        'email_verified_at' => 'datetime',
        'password' => 'hashed',
        'options' => AsEnumCollection::of(UserOption::class),
    ];
}

In Laravel 10, the same cast would look like the following since you cannot call static methods when defining an array property:

protected $casts = [
    'options' => AsEnumCollection::class.':'.UserOption::class,
];

This update is backward-compatible with Laravel 10, and you can still define casts via the $casts property combined with the new casts() method. The $casts property and casts() method are merged, with the method keys taking precedence over the $casts property.

I would recommend moving casts over to the method version if you want to take advantage of the static methods for the built-in casters.

Along with the update to define casts via the casts() method, new static methods were added to the built-in casters to ease defining casts:

AsCollection::using(OptionCollection::class);
AsEncryptedCollection::using(OptionCollection::class);
AsEnumArrayObject::using(OptionEnum::class);
AsEnumCollection::using(OptionEnum::class);

Shout out to Nuno Maduro, who implemented this feature in Pull Request #47237!