Dynamic casting based on passed data

[davidkvasnovsky]

Hi, thank you for such a nice package!

I need to pass data from Data Object into my Custom Cast:

RealEstateData.php

class RealEstateData extends Data
{
    public function __construct(

        #[WithCast(RealEstateTypeCast::class)]
        public readonly ?RealEstateTypeEnum $type,

        #[WithCast(RealEstatePropertiesCast::class, type: $this->type)] // I know this is not allowed
        public ?object $client_properties,
  ) {
    }
}

RealEstateTypeEnum.php

enum RealEstateTypeEnum: string
{
    case House = 'house';
    case Apartment = 'apartment';
}

Then in my RealEstatePropertiesCast.php I would like to do something like this:

class RealEstatePropertiesCast implements Cast
{
    public function __construct(
        protected RealEstateTypeEnum $type,
    ) {
    }

    public function cast(DataProperty $property, mixed $value): mixed
    {
        return match ($this->type) {
            RealEstateTypeEnum::House => RealEstateHousePropertiesData::from($value),
            RealEstateTypeEnum::Apartment => RealEstateApartmentPropertiesData::from($value),

            default => throw CannotCastRealEstateProperties::create($this->type->name, $value),
        };
    }
}

The biggest issue is that somehow I am not able to pass enum type of current instance of data object into my cast in a "clean way".

Thanks for any suggestions.

[rubenvanassche]

Hi @davidkvasnovsky,

At the moment we do not have such a feature, adding it to the Cast interface would break all current casts. That being said, I like the idea and we're working on a v2 of the package and I'm thinking about supporting such a feature(#84).

[davidkvasnovsky]

That would be very nice! May I ask you what alternative do you suggest to use for now?

[rubenvanassche]

You could skip the cast and use a magical creation method(https://spatie.be/docs/laravel-data/v1/as-a-data-transfer-object/creating-a-data-object#magical-creation), you have access to all the values being passed over there. I think that's the only solution, for now.