How to add relations to notifications? And get the related data in json

Question

I am trying to create relations, and when notifications are fetched via $user->unreadNotifications I want to control which fields are shown, and fetch the relations. I cannot figure out where to do this.

I did the following:

1. php artisan notifications:table
2. php artisan make:migration add_relations_to_notifications_table

3. In this new migration I added requester_id.

   $table->integer('requester_id')->unsigned()->nullable();
   $table->foreign('requester_id')->references('id')->on('users')->onDelete('cascade');
   

4. php migrate

5. php artisan make:notification AnInviteWasRequested

Then in AnInviteWasRequested I removed the toArray and replaced it with toDatabase:

public function toDatabase($notifiable)
{
    return [
        'requester_id' => Auth::guard('api')->user()->id
    ];
}

However this does not set the requester_id field, it just put json into the data column that looks like this: {"requester_id":1}.

Is there anyway to get this to update the requester_id field instead of updating data?

And also is it possible somewhere, like a Model file (not in vendor dir) to control which fields are displayed when $user->unreadNotifications is done?

Answer 1

Actually to define which field to show/save, and then you need it to display, you only need to modify the toDatabase method. Example:

public function toDatabase($notifiable)
{
    $user = Auth::guard('api')->user();

    return [
        'requester_id' => $user->id,
        'requester_name' => $user->name,
        // and more data that you need to show
    ];
}

So for relational data or any other data, just define it inside this method. Hope it helps. :)