Carbon Date Being Saved as String in Database

Question

I am trying to seed some data using Factories. One of the fields I'm trying to seed is a date field -- and I do so with the following code in my factory:

return [
    ...
    'date' => Carbon::now()->subDays(rand(1, 365))->startOfDay()
];

The problem is, this is getting saved in the database as a string -- which means that I CANNOT do the following in my blade templates: {{ $transaction->date->format('M, d Y') }},

When I try that, I get the following error message: Call to a member function format() on string.

Just as a test, I tried in my blade template the same exact code, just switching out created_at for date - and it works as I want. I.e., this works: {{ $transaction->created_at->format('M, d Y') }}.

In case it matters, the created_at field is created using $table->timestamps() in my migration file whereas the date field is created as follows: $table->date('date');.

Any idea what I need to do in order to get this to work?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Laravel provides a method to "cast" certain Model attributes to specific datatypes, including strings, integers, dates, etc. Since Carbon is built in to Laravel, specifying the date type auto-converts Model attributes to a Carbon instance. All you need to do is provide that logic to your model:

class Transaction extends Model {
  protected $casts = [
    'date' => 'date'
  ];
  ...
}

Now, when you retrieve a Transaction model record, the date attribute will automatically be a Carbon instance:

$transaction = Transaction::first();
dd($transaction->date, get_class($transaction->date));
// ^ Carbon\Carbon @1646769789^ {#4514 ... }, `Carbon\Carbon`

Now, you can perform Carbon logic, simply by chaining:

{{ $transaction->date->format('Y-m-d') }}
// `2022-03-08`

More casting types are available, and you can specify multiple attribute casts by simply adding them as key/value pairs to the $casts array. Full documentation is here:

https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/eloquent-mutators#attribute-casting