Laravel - Make global variable in Model to use only inside the Model

Question

I have two variables in my Model that i use in a few functions

$firstDayThisYear = Carbon::create(date('Y'), 1, 1, 0);
$lastDayThisYear = Carbon::create(date('Y'), 12, 31, 0);

how can i extract them and make them global to use them only inside of my Model?

i know it must be protected...but I am not sure if i need to put it like this:

protected static $firstDayThisYear = Carbon::create(date('Y'), 1, 1, 0);
protected static $lastDayThisYear = Carbon::create(date('Y'), 12, 31, 0);

Answer 1

If you're going to use these variables in one model, just do this:

protected $firstDayThisYear;

public function __construct(array $attributes = [])
{
    parent::__construct($attributes);

    $this->firstDayThisYear = Carbon::create(date('Y'), 1, 1, 0);
}

Then use it with $this->firstDayThisYear.

Also, you could get start of the year and start of the last day of the year with:

Carbon::now()->startOfYear();
Carbon::now()->endOfYear()->startOfDay();

I guess it's more readable.