A (somewhat opinionated) Laravel package to help make asking questions and getting answers a little easier and more uniform.

From time to time you may need to make inquiries of your application or different parts of your code. You may need to know whether or not something was done or you may need to build a collection of key value pairs. Sometimes this iss provided easily via model attributes or database queries. Sometimes, however, getting this information isn't quite as tidy as you might like it.

The goal of this package is to provide a (somewhat opinionated) way to make inquiries. You can create Inquiry classes. When you want to make a specific inquiry, then you "ask" that class: $myInquiry = MyInquiry::ask();. You get back a "details" object, which you define, that allows you to provide the details of your inquiry. Then, you ask for the answer. Here's a simple example:

$isAllowed = CanChildPlayPS4::ask()
    ->child($junior)
    ->onDateTime(now())
    ->answer();

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require telkins/laravel-inquiry

Usage

For now, one must manually create Inquiry and Details classes.

Create an Inquiry

To create an inquiry class, simply extend Inquiry like so:

use Telkins\LaravelInquiry\Inquiry;
use Telkins\LaravelInquiry\Contracts\Details;

class CanChildPlayPS4 extends Inquiry
{
    public function provideAnswer(Details $details)
    {
        if (! $details->child->areChoresDone()) {
            return false;
        }

        if ($details->child->isGrounded()) {
            return false;
        }

        if (! $details->child->isDoneWithHomework()) {
            return false;
        }

        return $this->isItAGoodTimeToPlay($details->dateTime);
    }

    // supporting methods, if needed...
}

Create Inquiry Details

To create an inquiry detail classs, simply extend Details like so:

use App\Child;
use Carbon\CarbonImmutable;
use Telkins\LaravelInquiry\Details;

class CanChildPlayPS4Details extends Details
{
    public $child;
    public $dateTime;

    public function child(Child $child): self
    {
        $this->child = $child;

        return $this;
    }

    public function onDateTime(CarbonImmutable $dateTime): self
    {
        $this->dateTime = $dateTime;

        return $this;
    }
}

"Ask" Your Question, Get an Answer

Once you have built your inquiry and inquiry details classes, then you can begin to use them. There are three main steps to asking your question and getting an answer:

1. Call the static ask() method on your Inquiry class. This returns the inquiry's details object.
2. Using the details object, provide the details of the inquiry.
3. Finally, request the answer by calling the answer() method on the details object.

Here is an example of asking and getting an answer all at once:

$isAllowed = CanChildPlayPS4::ask()
    ->child($junior)
    ->onDateTime(now())
    ->answer();

Here is an example of using the details object to provide different details to get different answers for different scenarios:

$inquiryDetails = CanChildPlayPS4::ask();

$canGregPlay = $inquiryDetails
    ->child($greg)
    ->onDateTime(now())
    ->answer();

$canPeterPlay = $inquiryDetails
    ->child($peter)
    ->answer();

Conventions

By default, each Inquiry class will look for a "details" class that has the same FQCN with Details appended. So, for our example CanChildPlayPS4 class, it will look for CanChildPlayPS4Details.

To override this behavior, you can specify the "details" class name in your Inquiry class like so:

use Telkins\LaravelInquiry\Inquiry;
use Telkins\LaravelInquiry\Contracts\Details;
use My\Custom\Namespace\UnconventionalNameDetails;

class CanChildPlayPS4 extends Inquiry
{
    protected static $detailsClass = UnconventionalNameDetails::class; // override default "details" class

    public function provideAnswer(Details $details)
    {
        // ...
    }

    // ...
}

Testing

composer test

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please use the issue tracker.

Credits

• Travis Elkins
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.