How is this supposed to work?

[grimzy]

How is this supposed to work?

[Synchro]

I discovered I was calling create instead of update in my update controller method so I fixed that and now it does not give the mutator errors; it reports back immediately with partially updated values. So I'm doing this to convert the supplied lat & long into a point in the update method:

    $request->request->add(['location' => new Point($request->latitude, $request->longitude)]);
    $location->update($request->all());

This gives me this result in the response:

{
    "id": 1,
    "created_at": "2018-03-16 16:39:47",
    "updated_at": "2018-03-17 13:36:44",
    "type": "account",
    "name": "Smurf city",
    "address": "123 cup lane",
    "location": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [
            150.15,
            21.21
        ]
    }
}

That looks like it has worked - but if I request that record again, it has not updated in the DB, even though timestamps are the same:

{
    "id": 1,
    "created_at": "2018-03-16 16:39:47",
    "updated_at": "2018-03-17 13:36:44",
    "type": "account",
    "name": "Smurf city",
    "address": "123 cup lane",
    "location": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [
            -0.118092,
            51.509865
        ]
    }
}

I still don't see why the lat & long virtual properties are not visible and the location is.

[Synchro]

I tracked down the query in the database log, and none of location, longitude, or latitude are included in the update query:

update `locations` set `updated_at` = '2018-03-17 13:36:44', `name` = 'Smurf city', `address` = '123 cup lane' where `id` = 1

[Synchro]

Aha - I discovered that the location field is only updated if it's in fillable; being in spatialfields alone (what the docs suggest) isn't enough. But this means I can't implement this lat/long mapping transparently; the location property will always be visible, and it also doesn't explain why the fillable lat & long are ignored too.

[Synchro]

Finally, I discovered a useful answer on Stackoverflow about virtual properties. Ultimately I needed to add these to my model to hide the location property, and to make longitude and latitude visible:

protected $hidden = [
    'location',
];

protected $appends = [
    'longitude',
    'latitude',
];

[Synchro]

Just for completeness, I ran into another issue related to this. Because the location attribute is never submitted in an HTTP request, when you try to apply a mutator to it (like $this->location->setLng($longitude);), it will fail because location will not be in the model's attributes array. I had to add a dummy location value in the constructor for my model so it would exist later on when the mutator needs it:

public function __construct($attributes = [])
{
    $this->location = new Point(51.509865, -0.118092);
    parent::__construct($attributes);
}

The $attributes parameter is vital, and you must pass it through to the parent, because otherwise you're effectively unsetting all the submitted parameters, and you will probably get missing default value errors from your SQL layer later on (this was the cause of the missing values I noticed in an earlier comment in this thread).

This all seems incredibly convoluted and messy simply to provide a usable input format for a single Point value. Is this really how it's meant to work? Have I missed something vital?

[Synchro]

Minor update: 22 months on and I've still not managed to make this work. I can't see any way of using point values if their data originates in a request. Does anyone have an example of using this package that doesn't involve internally generated points?

[Synchro]

Setting a default value in the constructor really doesn't work, but I've found a better fudge for the null property problem. If the location is null at the time it's set, fill it with a default value:

public function setLatitudeAttribute(float $latitude): void
{
    if ($this->location === null) {
        $this->location = new Point(0, 0);
    }
    $this->location->setLat($latitude);
}

I'd still love to know how others deal with this.