Laravel: customize or extend notifications - database model - laravel

Question

IMHO, the current Database channel for saving notifications in Laravel is really bad design:
You can't use foreign key cascades on items for cleaning up notifications of a deleted item for example
Searching custom attributes in the data column (casted to Array) is not optimal
How would you go about extending the DatabaseNotification Model in vendor package?
I would like to add columns event_id, question_id, user_id (the user that created the notification) etc... to the default laravel notifications table
How do you override the send function to include more columns?
In:
vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Notifications/Channels/DatabaseChannel.php
The code:
class DatabaseChannel
{
/**
* Send the given notification.
*
* #param mixed $notifiable
* #param \Illuminate\Notifications\Notification $notification
* #return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model
*/
public function send($notifiable, Notification $notification)
{
return $notifiable->routeNotificationFor('database')->create([
'id' => $notification->id,
'type' => get_class($notification),
\\I want to add these
'user_id' => \Auth::user()->id,
'event_id' => $notification->type =='event' ? $notification->id : null,
'question_id' => $notification->type =='question' ? $notification->id : null,
\\End adding new columns
'data' => $this->getData($notifiable, $notification),
'read_at' => null,
]);
}
}

Answer 1

To create a custom Notification Channel:
First, create a Class in App\Notifications for example:
<?php
namespace App\Notifications;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notification;
class CustomDbChannel
{
public function send($notifiable, Notification $notification)
{
$data = $notification->toDatabase($notifiable);
return $notifiable->routeNotificationFor('database')->create([
'id' => $notification->id,
//customize here
'answer_id' => $data['answer_id'], //<-- comes from toDatabase() Method below
'user_id'=> \Auth::user()->id,
'type' => get_class($notification),
'data' => $data,
'read_at' => null,
]);
}
}
Second, use this channel in the via method in the Notification class:
<?php
namespace App\Notifications;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notification;
use App\Notifications\CustomDbChannel;
class NewAnswerPosted extends Notification
{
private $answer;
public function __construct($answer)
{
$this->answer = $answer;
}
public function via($notifiable)
{
return [CustomDbChannel::class]; //<-- important custom Channel defined here
}
public function toDatabase($notifiable)
{
return [
'type' => 'some data',
'title' => 'other data',
'url' => 'other data',
'answer_id' => $this->answer->id //<-- send the id here
];
}
}

Answer 2

Create and use your own Notification model and Notifiable trait and then use your own Notifiable trait in your (User) models.
App\Notifiable.php:
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable as BaseNotifiable;
trait Notifiable
{
use BaseNotifiable;
/**
* Get the entity's notifications.
*/
public function notifications()
{
return $this->morphMany(Notification::class, 'notifiable')
->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
}
}
App\Notification.php:
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Notifications\DatabaseNotification;
class Notification extends DatabaseNotification
{
// ...
}
App\User.php:
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
class User extends Authenticatable
{
use Notifiable;
// ...
}

Answer 3

An example for #cweiske response.
If you really need extends the Illuminate\Notifications\Channels\DatabaseChannel not creating a new Channel you can:
Extends the channel:
<?php
namespace App\Notifications;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Channels\DatabaseChannel as BaseDatabaseChannel;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notification;
class MyDatabaseChannel extends BaseDatabaseChannel
{
/**
* Send the given notification.
*
* #param mixed $notifiable
* #param \Illuminate\Notifications\Notification $notification
* #return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model
*/
public function send($notifiable, Notification $notification)
{
$adminNotificationId = null;
if (method_exists($notification, 'getAdminNotificationId')) {
$adminNotificationId = $notification->getAdminNotificationId();
}
return $notifiable->routeNotificationFor('database')->create([
'id' => $notification->id,
'type' => get_class($notification),
'data' => $this->getData($notifiable, $notification),
// ** New custom field **
'admin_notification_id' => $adminNotificationId,
'read_at' => null,
]);
}
}
And register the Illuminate\Notifications\Channels\DatabaseChannel on application container again:
app\Providers\AppServiceProvider.php
class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
/**
* Bootstrap any application services.
*
* #return void
*/
public function boot()
{
//
}
/**
* Register any application services.
*
* #return void
*/
public function register()
{
$this->app->bind(
Illuminate\Notifications\Channels\DatabaseChannel::class,
App\Notifications\MyDatabaseChannel::class
);
}
}
Now when the Illuminate\Notifications\ChannelManager try createDatabaseDriver will return your registered database driver.
More one option to solve this problem!

Answer 4

Unlike "Bassem El Hachem", I wanted to keep the database keyword in the via() methods.
So in addition to a custom DatabaseChannel, I also wrote my own ChannelManager that returns my own DatabaseChannel in the createDatabaseDriver() method.
In my apps' ServiceProvider::register() method, I overwrote the singleton for the original ChannelManager class to return my custom manager.

Answer 5

I solved a similar problem by customizing notification class:
create the class for this action:
artisan make:notification NewQuestion
inside it:
public function __construct($user,$question)
{
$this->user=$user;
$this->question=$question;
}
...
public function toDatabase($notifiable){
$data=[
'question'=>$this->(array)$this->question->getAttributes(),
'user'=>$this->(array)$this->user->getAttributes()
];
return $data;
}
then you can access proper data in view or controller like this:
#if($notification->type=='App\Notifications\UserRegistered')
New question from {{$notification->data['user']['name']}}
#endif