How To Cast Eloquent Pivot Parameters?

Question

I have the following Eloquent Models with relationships:

class Lead extends Model 
{
    public function contacts() 
    {
        return $this->belongsTo         


        

Answer 1

In Laravel 5.4.14 this issue has been resolved. You are able to define a custom pivot model and tell your relationships to use this custom model when they are defined. See the documentation, under the heading Defining Custom Intermediate Table Models.

To do this you need to create a class to represent your pivot table and have it extend the Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\Pivot class. On this class you may define your $casts property.

 'boolean'
    ];
}

You can then use the using method on the BelongsToMany relationship to tell Laravel that you want your pivot to use the specified custom pivot model.

belongsToMany('App\Contact')->using('App\CustomPivot');
    }
}

Now, whenever you access your pivot by using ->pivot, you should find that it is an instance of your custom pivot class and the $casts property should be honoured.

---

Update 1st June 2017

The issue raised in the comments by @cdwyer regarding updating the pivot table using the usual sync/attach/save methods is expected to be fixed in Laravel 5.5 which is due to be released next month (July 2017).

See Taylor's comment at the bottom of this bug report and his commit, fixing the issue here.