Problem on setBirthdayAttribute

Getting your values from the Input on your model is a very bad practice. You should pass the Input values as params

public function setBirthdayAttributes($year, $month, $day) 

Then again, to me the setBirthdayAttributes method name is a bit confusing, could be read has a attribute mutator but its not. Moreover this method is not really useful. Why don't you simply do this in your controller:

$user->birthday = date('Y-m-d', Input::get('year') . '-' . Input::get('month') . '-' . Input::get('day'));

You alo will need some validation on the date part, and maybe make use of Carbon is an option on your model by declaring the birthday attribute as a date:

class User extends Eloquent {
    protected $dates = ['birthday'];

    ...

}

Adding that code in my controller is messy don't you think? How about in the UserRepository? Is it nice when I place that code in my UserRepository?

And BTW you have any suggestion about other method name instead of setBirthdayAttribute? Hehehe

The only responsibility of your controller is transforming your user input into DTOs for example, and delegating. So no it is not messy to set your values directly from your controller. Referring to the Input from a UserRepository is also a bad practice, think about re-usability. If you have an attribute called birthday, then no need to create a method name, as Eloquent has its on magic and you can already call setBirthdayAttribute even if it doesn't exist on your model.

You think this is corret way?

in my UseController.php

public function store()
 {
  $this->user->birthday = $this->birthday();

  $this->user->save(Input::all());
 }

 public function birthday()
 {
  return date('Y-m-d', strtotime(Input::get('year') . '-' . Input::get('month') . '-' . Input::get('day')));
 }

and in my User.php

protected $dates = ['birthday'];

Hmm.. I probably wouldn't have used a function for it. I would just go at like this, using Input::only and implode() instead.

$user->birthday = date('Y-m-d', strtotime(implode('-',  Input::only('year','month','day'))));

Why not? how about in my update method? I will paste again the long command like this?

public function update()
{
  $user->birthday = date('Y-m-d', strtotime(implode('-', Input::only('year','month','day'))));
}

confused...

you can also use eloquent's accesors & mutators. http://laravel.com/docs/master/eloquent#accessors-and-mutators

@santiagogg I read that link and I tried this code

User.php

public function setBirthdayAttribute($year, $month, $day)
 {
  return $this->attributes['birthday'] = date('Y-m-d', strtotime(implode('-', Input::only($year, $month, $day))));
 }

and in my UserController.php

public function store()
 {
  $this->user->save(Input::all());
 }

in my database the birthday is 0000-00-00 not working why?

The function expect one parameter that's why it doesn't work.. It depends on how you want to do it. If you are saving year, month & day in the model, you can use this attributes in the accessories. You should only use Input Facade in the controller. If you are not saving year , month & day you should build the date in the controller. If you want to use mass assignment you can add the birthday attribute to the array of params.

@santiagogg Please comment a example code.