How to filter User by role based on the called Model? - laravel

Question

I'm using Laratrust to manage these roles:
Patient
Doctor
I've a class called User which is the main entity, then I have a specific class for each role: Patient and Doctor.
Problem
To retrieve a list of users with the role of doctor I have to write:
User::whereRoleIs('doctor')->get();
The problem's that I have defined some relationship within the class Doctor, eg:
<?php
namespace App\Models;
use App\Models\Boilerplate\User;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
class Doctor extends User
{
use HasFactory;
protected $table = 'users';
public function patients()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Patient::class, 'invites', 'doctor_id', 'user_id');
}
}
and I cannot access to the relationship patients from the User model.
Is there a way to call Doctor:with('patients')->get() and return automatically the users which have the role of Doctor?
So if I type: Doctor:all() the result must be equal to User::whereRoleIs('doctor')->get()
How can I do this?

Answer 1

Splitting data like this by model isn't really the intended use for models. Models in Laravel contain data on a per-table basis. In order to achieve what you want I would either make a DocterService that has methods in it to retrieve docter users by calling User::whereRoleIs('doctor') or just use this method straight away.
If you really want to use the model though you can use scopes. (https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/eloquent#query-scopes) Create a new scope that includes the whereRoleIs('doctor') method
<?php
namespace App\Scopes;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Scope;
class DoctorScope implements Scope
{
/**
* Apply the scope to a given Eloquent query builder.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder $builder
* #param \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model $model
* #return void
*/
public function apply(Builder $builder, Model $model)
{
$builder->whereRoleIs('doctor');
}
}
and apply it to the model by adding the following to the model:
/**
* The "booted" method of the model.
*
* #return void
*/
protected static function booted()
{
static::addGlobalScope(new DoctorScope);
}