Beginning Laravel 4 - Keeping the controller skinny

Question

I'm trying to maintain a skinny controller, but I'm still getting used to what can go in my controller, since before I used to pile just about everything inside of it. In this example I'm inserting validated data into a database, which I assumed is correct. What I'm confused about is that I want to take one of the field inputs, manipulate its text formatting and then save it to another field in my database. What I have written works, but I don't know if its good to have this code in my controller, if not where should it go?

Controller

public function store()
{
    $validation = new Services\Validators\Deal;

    if($validation->passes())
    {
        $deals = Deals::create(Input::all());

        // start code in question
        $image = Input::get('company');
        $image = strtolower($image);
        $image = str_replace(" ", "-", $image);
        $image .= ".png";

        $deals->image = $image;
        $deals->save();
        // end code in question

        return Redirect::to('deals/create')
            ->with('message', 'Deal Created');
    }

    return Redirect::back()
        ->withInput()
        ->withErrors($validation->errors);
}

To recap, I'm not sure if the code in question belongs in my controller, and if it doesn't, where would it be better placed? Thanks for any insights.

Answer 1

Any business logic should be placed in models, or repositories and your controller should look just like

<?php

class DealsController extends controller {

    public function __construct(Deals $deals) //// <---- Dependency Injection
    {
        $this->deals = $deals;
    }

    public function store()
    {
        try 
        {
            $this->deals->insertRow(Input::all());
        } 
        catch (\Exceptions\ValidationException $e) 
        {
            return Redirect::back()
                ->withInput()
                ->withErrors($this->deals->errors);
        }

        return Redirect::to('deals/create')
            ->with('message', 'Deal Created');
    }

}

And in your Deals class, you do whatever you need to do with your data

class Deals extends Eloquent {

    public function insertRow($input)
    {
        $validation = new Services\Validators\Deal;

        if($validation->passes())
        {
            $deals = Deals::create($input);

            // start code in question
            $image = $input['company'];
            $image = strtolower($image);
            $image = str_replace(" ", "-", $image);
            $image .= ".png";

            $deals->image = $image;
            $deals->save();
            // end code in question
        }

        $this->errors = $validation->errors;

        throw new \Exceptions\ValidationException("Error inserting Deals", $validation->errors);
    }

}

This is untested and a not-really-refactored code, but I hope you can see a point in it.

Answer 2

You could actually remove all the code in question and use Laravel Mutator instead.

Basically, setup a function in your Deals class which will automatically process the text formatting whenever data is about to be set/save via the Model Eloquent ::create, or update.

Something like

public function setImageAttribute($value)
{
    $image = strtolower($value);
    $image = str_replace(" ", "-", $image);
    $image .= ".png";

    $this->attributes['image'] = $image;
}

Refer to http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#accessors-and-mutators