How to Add Custom Attribute In Laravel Eloquent

In this short snippet, you will learn how to define the custom attributes in Laravel Eloquent Model using the "appends" property. For this example, we'll be using the "Post" model and we'll be adding a custom property called "cover".

Step 1: Define attributes in $appends Property

The first step is to define the "$appends" property and you can define it like below.

<?php

namespace App\Models;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    protected $appends = ['cover_url'];
}

Step 2: Define the accessor for that attributes

In the next step, you will have to define the accessor for the attribute. For this case let's say your existing data is stored in JSON, you can output the value like below.

public function getCoverUrlAttribute()
{
    return '/storage/' . $this->cover;
}

Step 3: Call the Attribute From The Front End

Now from anywhere within your code, you can call the attribute using the "cover_url" attribute.

<?php

$postCoverURL = Post::first()->cover_url; // 'storage/posts/first-post.jpg'