A way to store site settings in Laravel

If it is after logged in as an Admin, I always prefer to store in DB.

@tisuchi, thank you for your reply!

Yes, it happens after logged in as an Admin. Well, will be MySQL suitable for my needs? I mean, I heard of some key-value pair databases like Memcached or Redis, but don't fully understand their usecases)

Can you (or somebody) explain, please - is this the case to use those or not?

Much appreciate :)

@chori.av

Since it's somehow related to configuration, I suggest you to store in .env that is the way more secure and best practice.

@tisuchi, well, on the other hand is the fact, that site is multilingual and for each language version there are may be different settings.

Also, I forgot to mention (sorry), that some settings are like "Welcome message" are don't suitable to .env file

But the idea is good, I thought about it too)

@tisuchi, wow, this is so cool! ?

But could you explain a little (or give link do docs) two things:

• How can I store something in environment variable
• And how can I create another config file? (sounds like It something like second .env, but more specific and with another name :D)

Check these links

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40450162/how-to-set-env-values-in-laravel-programmatically-on-the-fly
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38665907/how-to-add-custom-config-file-to-app-config-in-laravel-5

@chori.av 4 Options, are as follows:

Option 1 - traditional method would be settings DB a "settings" table with columns for each setting (doesn't scale well and would definitely NOT recommend)

list of table columns (+1 column for every type of setting)

id: 
is_business: boolean
has_fax: boolean
server: ...

Option 2. DB with 2 tables:

Table 1. setting_prop (options) e.g. is business or has business related to business, but you might have settings like, has_fax, is_local, etc.

id: 3
prop_key: is_business
prop_value: true

id: 4
prop_key: is_business
prop_value: false

Unlike #1 ... you have to search for the key and then read values e.g. (where->("prop_key","is_business")->get()) => in our case we get 2 records back

Table 3: user to setting property relationship (pivot table) - user_id , setting_prop_id e.g. user 1 has selected is_business as false

Option 2. - (My preferred method) json string stored in SQL 5.7 json column or < SQL 5.7 text column. In this case you are parsing the json string to set and get values. So more code than DB approach. Very flexible as you can adjust as you need. Could encrypt string if there is sensitive data contained. Also works great with multi-language as you can create your own language file to support all languages. So each admin will have a record / row. Columns:

 id: int
settings: json / text
timestamp: timestamp  

Option 3. if performance is key you could store as bits. That does require more coding and easy t get confused. Unless you have a large app and high transactions wouldn't recommend.

Example of json once parsed to array

<?php

use App\User;

class Settings
{

    /**
     * @var array
     */
    protected $settings = [];

    /**
     * @var User
     */
    protected $user;

    /**
     * @var array
     */
    protected $defaults = [
        'opt_in_monthly' => false,
        'opt_in_partner' => false,
    ];

    /**
     * Settings constructor.
     * @param array $settings
     * @param User $user
     */
    public function __construct(array $settings, User $user)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
        $this->settings = $settings;
    }

    /**
     * Get setting by key
     *
     * @param $key
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function get($key)
    {
        return array_get($this->settings, $key);
    }

    /**
     * Return true if settings has key
     *
     * @param $key
     * @return bool
     */
    public function has($key)
    {
        return array_key_exists($key,$this->settings);
    }

    /**
     * Set default settings for user
     */
    public function defaults()
    {
        foreach ($this->defaults as $key => $value) {
            $this->user->set($key, $value);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Set setting key value pair
     *
     * @param $key
     * @param $value
     */
    public function set($key, $value)
    {
        $this->settings[$key] = $value;

        $this->persist();
    }

    /**
     * Return all settings
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function all()
    {
        return $this->settings;
    }

    /**
     * Merge setting attributes with existing attributes
     *
     * @param array $attributes
     * @return bool|int
     */
    public function merge(array $attributes)
    {
        $this->settings = array_merge(
            $this->settings,
            array_only($attributes, array_keys($this->settings))

        );

        return $this->persist();
    }

    /**
     * Save settings
     *
     * @return bool|int
     */
    public function persist()
    {
       return $this->user->update(['settings' => $this->settings]);
    }

    /**
     * Magic get for settings by key
     *
     * @param $key
     * @return mixed
     * @throws \Exception
     */
    public function __get($key)
    {
        if ($this->has($key)) {
            return $this->get($key);
        }

        throw new \Exception("The {$key} setting does not exist.");
    }


}

@nolros, thank you for your reply! I will definitely have this four options in mind. It was pretty detailed response :)

Thank you all! ??

If anyone is interested, I have developed a package for this purpose

Search in packagist for arandu/laravel-site-options (cant post links yet)