Override writing behavior

This is the official documentation of the forestadmin/laravel-forestadmin v2+ and forestadmin/symfony-forestadmin PHP agents.

Forest Admin allows replacing the default field writing behavior with your own custom logic.

This is useful when you want to change how a given field behaves, but also to make computed fields writable.

How does it work

The replaceFieldWriting function allows to change the behavior of any change by creating a new patch that will be applied to the record.

You should refrain from using handlers that have side effects (to perform error handling, validation, ...) and use hooks instead.

Making a field read-only

Can be achieved without any code in the field settings ↗.

Examples

Changing other fields in the same record

In the following example, editing or creating a fullName will update both firstName and lastName fields of the record.

use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceCustomizer\CollectionCustomizer;
use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceToolkit\Components\Query\ConditionTree\Operators;

$forestAgent->customizeCollection(
    'Customer',
    function (CollectionCustomizer $builder) {
        $builder->replaceFieldWriting(
        	'fullName',
        	function($value) {
        		[$firstName, $lastName] = explode(' ', $value);

        		return compact('firstName', 'lastName');
        	}
        );
    }
);

Having specific behavior only for updates

You can have different behavior for creations and updates.

In this example, each time the firstName field is edited, we also want to update a timestamp field.

use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceCustomizer\CollectionCustomizer;
use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceToolkit\Components\Query\ConditionTree\Operators;
use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceCustomizer\Decorators\Write\WriteReplace\WriteCustomizationContext;

$forestAgent->customizeCollection(
    'Customer',
    function (CollectionCustomizer $builder) {
        $builder->replaceFieldWriting(
        	'firstName',
        	function($value,  WriteCustomizationContext $context) {
        		return match ($context->getAction()) {
        			'create' => ['firstName' => $value, 'firstNameLastEdited' => null],
        			'update' => ['firstName' => $value, 'firstNameLastEdited' => 'updated' => date('c')],
        			default => throw new ForestException('invalid action'),
                };
        	}
        );
    }
);

Changing fields in related records

Handling relationships inside a replaceFieldWriting will only work for ManyToOne and OneToOne relationships.

In this simple example, we have two collections that are linked together:

• The Users collection has a job and a portfolioId as foreignKey

• The Portfolios collection has a title

When the user updates his job field we want also to update the title of the portfolio by the job name.

use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceCustomizer\CollectionCustomizer;
use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceToolkit\Components\Query\ConditionTree\Operators;

$forestAgent->customizeCollection(
    'Customer',
    function (CollectionCustomizer $builder) {
        $builder->replaceFieldWriting(
        	'job',
        	function($value) {
        		return ['job' => $value, 'portfolio' => ['title' => $value]];
        	}
        );
    }
);

If the relationships do not exist it will create them with the given field values.

You can also provide another portfolioId to update the relationships and their fields:

use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceCustomizer\CollectionCustomizer;
use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceToolkit\Components\Query\ConditionTree\Operators;

$forestAgent->customizeCollection(
    'Customer',
    function (CollectionCustomizer $builder) {
        $builder->replaceFieldWriting(
        	'job',
        	function($value) {
        		return ['job' => $value, 'portfolioId' => 8, 'portfolio' => ['title' => $value]];
        	}
        );
    }
);

Of course, you can chain the relationships. For example, if a portfolio has a one-to-one relationship with the formats collection, you can update it by writing the right path.

use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceCustomizer\CollectionCustomizer;
use ForestAdmin\AgentPHP\DatasourceToolkit\Components\Query\ConditionTree\Operators;

$forestAgent->customizeCollection(
    'Customer',
    function (CollectionCustomizer $builder) {
        $builder->replaceFieldWriting(
        	'job',
        	function($value) {
        		return [
        			'job' => $value,
        			'portfolioId' => 8,
        			'portfolio' => [
        				'title' => $value,
        				'format' => [
        					'name' => 'pdf'
        				]
        			]
        		];
        	}
        );
    }
);