Laravel: Saving to a JSON Field in a Model

In Lar­avel, you can save data to a JSON field in a mod­el by using the json or array cast on the attribute in the model’s class.

For exam­ple, if you have a mod­el called Prod­uct with a JSON field called data, you would define the field in the mod­el like this:

class Product extends Model
{
    protected $casts = [
        'data' => 'json',
    ];
}

Then, when you save data to the data field, it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be con­vert­ed to JSON before being stored in the database.

$product = new Product;
$product->data = ['key' => 'value'];
$product->save();

You can also use the array cast instead of json if you want the data to be stored as a seri­al­ized PHP array in the data­base. This can be use­ful if you need to per­form more com­plex queries on the data or if you plan on manip­u­lat­ing the data in PHP rather than in the database. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, it can also save some space in the data­base as seri­al­ized PHP arrays can be more com­pact than JSON. How­ev­er, keep in mind that this approach may not be com­pat­i­ble with some data­base engines and you may face dif­fi­cul­ties in query­ing the data using SQL. So, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er the use-case and your spe­cif­ic require­ments before choos­ing between json and array cast.