Laravel (Eloquent) Table || Peer equivalent

Question

Propel uses Peer classes, and doctrine used Table classes as a way to manipulate respective objects and object properties, without having to pollute the actual object with static methods.

After cursory glance of the laravel (eloquent) docs, I didn't see anything that eloquent provides for the same Peer or Table like functionality. My question is, does laravel (or eloquent) provide a namespace for such classes, or do I just use Table and let autoloader take care of the rest?

// Example use of a table class in doctrine 1.2
$user = UserTable::getInstance()->findById(1);

-- Update 1 --

Layman example of how a doctrine table class may be used:

class UserTable
{
    public static function getInstance()
    {
        return Doctrine_Core::getTable('User');
    }

    public function linkFoo($userId, array $foos)
    {
        $user = $this->findById($userId);

        foreach ($foos as $foo) {

            $user->foo = $foo;

            $user->save();
        }
    }
}

// SomeController.php
executeSaveFoo()
{
    UserTable::getInstance()->linkFoo($this->getUser(), array('foo1', 'foo2'));
}

The purpose of the doctrine table class is to provide an api for actions against respective objects which should not be in the controller, in the above example the linkFoo class will link provided foos to the respective user object.

I feel the separation between objects and 'table' classes is important, as an object shouldn't know how to instantiate nor hydrate itself.

Answer 1

As mentioned earlier, there is more than one way to accomplish the task, but here's a quick example using Commands.

Controller

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

//...
use App\Http\Requests\UpdateUserRequest;
use App\Commands\UpdateUser;
use App\User;
//...

class UserController extends Controller {

/**
 * Update the specified resource in storage.
 *
 * @param  int  $id
 * @return Response
 */
public function update(UpdateUserRequest $request, $id)
{
    //gather request data
    $data = $request->all();

    //retrieve user
    $user= User::findOrFail($id);

    //update user
    $updateUser = \Bus::dispatch(
                        new UpdateUser($user, $data)
                     );

    //check if update was successful
    if($updateUser)
    {
        //update successful
        return redirect('/route/here')->with('message', 'User updated successfully');
    }
    else
    {
        //else redirect back with error message
        return redirect()->back()->with('error', 'Error updating user');
    } 
}
}

The UpdateUserRequest class would handle validation.

Command

namespace App\Commands;

use App\Commands\Command;

use Illuminate\Contracts\Bus\SelfHandling;

class UpdateUser extends Command implements SelfHandling {

    protected $user, $data;

    /**
     * Create a new command instance.
     */
    public function __construct($user, $data)
    {
        $this->user= $user;
        $this->data = $data;
    }

    /**
     * Execute the command.
     */
    public function handle()
    {
        //assign first name
        $this->user->first_name = $this->data['first_name'];

        //assign last name
        $this->user->last_name = $this->data['last_name'];

        //assign email address
        $this->user->email = $this->data['email'];

        //update user
        if($this->user->update())
        {
            //updated successfully, return true
            return true;
        }
        else
        {
            //else return false
            return false;
        } 
    }

}