Best Practice - Laravel Controller Eloquent merge - laravel

Question

I have a scope on my Supplier model that returns results where active = true.
This works great when creating new entries, as I only want the user to see active suppliers.
Current entries may have an inactive supplier; When I edit it, I want to see all active Suppliers, plus the current supplier (if it is inactive)
I have this code in my controller:
$suppliers = Supplier::active()->get();
if (!$suppliers->contains('id', $record->supplier->id))
{
$suppliers->add(Supplier::find($record->supplier->id));
}
Two questions: Is this the correct way to do this? Should this code be in my controller or should I have it somewhere else? (perhaps a scope but I wouldn't know how to code that).
Edit:
Thanks for the help guys. I have applied advice from each of the answers and refactored my code into a new scope:
public function scopeActiveIncluding($query, Model $model = null)
{
$query->where('active', 1);
if ($model && !$model->supplier->active)
{
$query->orWhere('id', $model->supplier->id);
}
}

Answer 1

What you've written will work, but the Collection::contains function can potentially be pretty slow if the collection is large.
Since you have the id, I would probably make the following change:
$suppliers = Supplier::active()->get();
$supplier = Supplier::find($record->supplier->id);
if (!$supplier->active) {
$suppliers->add($supplier);
}
Of course, the downside to this is that you may be making an unnecessary query on the database.
So you have to consider:
is the record's supplier more likely to be active or inactive?
is the size of the collection of active suppliers large enough to justify another (potentially wasted) call to the database?
Make the choice that makes the most sense, based on what you know of your application's data.
As for the second question, if you will only need this specific set of suppliers in this one part of your application, then the controller is a good place for this code.
If, however, you will need this particular set of suppliers in other parts of your application, you should probably move this code elsewhere. In that case, it might make sense to create a function on the the related model (whatever type $record is...) that returns that model's suppliers set. Something like:
public function getSuppliers()
{
$suppliers = Supplier::active()->get();
$supplier = $this->supplier;
if (!$supplier->active) {
$suppliers->add($supplier);
}
return $suppliers;
}

Answer 2

I saw #Vince's answer about 1st question, and I'm agree with him.
About 2nd question:
Write scope in Supplier model like this:
public function scopeActive($query){
$query->where('active', 1); // for boolean type
}
For good practice, you need to write the logic parts in services like "App\Services\SupplierService.php". And there write the function you want:
public function activeSuppliersWithCurrent($record) {
$suppliers = Supplier::active()->get();
$supplier = Supplier::find($record->supplier->id);
if (!$supplier->active) {
$suppliers->add($supplier);
}
}
In your SupplierController's constructor inject the instance of that service and use the function, for example:
use App\Servives\SupplierService;
protected $supplierService = null;
public function __construct(SupplierService $supplierService) {
$this->supplierService = $supplierService;
}
public function getActiveSuppliersWithCurrent(...) {
$result = $this->supplierService->activeSuppliersWithCurrent($record);
}
As you can see, later you will not need to change anything in controller. If you'll need to change for example the query of suppliers selection, you will just have to change something only in service. This way will make your code blocks separated and shorter.
Also the sense for this pattern: you don't need to access the models from controller. All logic related with models will implemented in services.
For other projects you can grab only services or only controllers, and implement another part differently. But in that case if you had all codes in controller, that will prevent you to grab the portions of necessary codes, cuz may you don't remember what doing each blocks...

Answer 3

You could add a where clause to the query to also find that id.
$suppliers = Supplier::active()->orWhere('id', $record->supplier->id)->get();
You could potentially slide this into the active scope by passing the 'id' as an argument.
public function scopeActive($query, $id = null)
{
$query->where('active', true);
if ($id) {
$query->orWhere('id', $id);
}
}
Supplier::active($record->supplier->id)->get();
Or make another scope that does this.