Post Meta

With Fresa, post meta is a first-class citizen of the Post Model object.

use Fresa\PostModel;

class Event extends PostModel {}

Assign meta values as properties to the Post Model instance:

$event = new Event;
$event->venue = 'Central Park';
$event->venue; // 'Central Park'

Post meta values are automatically persisted to the record upon save:

$event->save();
$event->id; // 123

$sameEvent = Event::find(123);
$sameEvent->venue; // 'Central Park'

This is equivalent to using the standard get_post_meta method:

get_post_meta(123, 'Venue', true); // 'Central Park'

Casting Meta Values

Fresa supports casting meta values to certain types. Currently, date and boolean are supported.

Use the $casts property to instruct Fresa to cast your meta values:

class Event extends PostModel
{
    protected $casts = [
        'start' => 'date',
        'end' => 'date',
        'recurring' => 'boolean',
    ];
}

This allows you to interact with casted meta values as expected:

$event->recurring = 1;
$event->start = 'today';
$event->end = 'tomorrow';

$event->recurring; // true
$event->start; // instance of Carbon\Carbon;
$event->end; // instance of Carbon\Carbon;

Casted values persist to the database in a safe manner, meaning date values stored in the database are converted to date time strings, so they can be used in WordPress queries:

$event->save();
$event->id; // 123

get_post_meta(123, 'start', true); // 2017-01-01 00:00:00