How do I return falsey values from a Scope Query in Laravel 4?

Question

Regarding Scope Queries, is it intended behavior that returning any falsey value will result in an Eloquent\Builder being returned?

If I return any non-falsey value (say a number, string, array, etc) it will return the actual value (be it a number, string, array, etc) but if I return false, 0, null it always returns an Eloquent\Builder.

Is there a way to work around this, and return the correct type when a falsey instead of a object of type builder?

Abstracted Test Case

In Model

class MyModel extends Eloquent
{
  public function scopeTestFalse{
    return 0;  
  }
  public function scopeTestTrue()
  {
    return 99;  
  }

}

In Route

var_dump(MyModel::scopeTestFalse()); // object(Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder)
var_dump(MyModel::scopeTestTrue()); // int(99)

have you declared those functions as static ? the above example works fine for me, using laravel 4.1 on PHP 5.3.27 — cecilozaur
They're not static. When you say it works fine, what does scopeTestFalse return? — Chris
int(0) the other one returns int(99), make sure to declare all functions static because Eloquent implements the __callStatic() function (which gets triggered whenever you try and access a static method that's not part of the class you are calling). Hope this makes sense. — cecilozaur
Scopes aren't meant to be static. Also, you can drop the "scope" portion when calling them - part of Laravel's magic. IE: MyModel::testFalse(); If you aren't manipulating a relationship or query object however you might look at simply making these a function and not a scope - which bypasses some of the magic used to chain query objects. — Abba Bryant
@AbbaBryant This is the correct answer, scopes aren't meant to be static and should only act on relationships/queries. Please change your comment to an answer, and I will mark it correct — Chris

Abba Bryant Abba Bryant · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-30T16:51:16

Scopes aren't meant to be static. Also, you can drop the "scope" portion when calling them - part of Laravel's magic. IE: MyModel::testFalse(); If you aren't manipulating a relationship or query object however you might look at simply making these a function and not a scope - which bypasses some of the magic used to chain query objects.

How do I return falsey values from a Scope Query in Laravel 4?

1 Answers