Blueprint | Model Shorthands

Model Shorthands

Blueprint provides several shorthands when defining models. While using these may at time appear as invalid YAML, they are provided for developer convenience. Blueprint will properly expand these shorthands into valid YAML before parsing the draft file.

Blueprint provides an implicit model shorthand by automatically generating the id and timestamp (created_at, and updated_at) columns on every model. You never need to specify these columns when defining models.

Of course, you are able to define these yourself at anytime. For example, if you want to use a different column type for the id column, like uuid.

You may also disable them by marking them as false. For example, to disable the timestamp columns, you may add timestamps: false to your model definition. If you wish to generate the timestamp columns with timezone column types, you may use the timestampsTz shorthand.

Blueprint also offers a softDeletes shorthand. Adding this to your model definition will generate the appropriate deleted_at column, as well add the SoftDeletes trait to your model. Similarly, if you want timezone information, you may use the softDeletesTz shorthand.

You may write these shorthands using the camel casing shown above or all lowercase. Blueprint supports both for developer convenience.

To illustrate using these shorthands, here is the longhand definition of a model:

models:
  Widget:
    id: id
    deleted_at: timestamp
    created_at: timestamp
    updated_at: timestamp

And again using shorthands:

models:
  Widget:
    id
    softDeletes
    timestamps

And finally, leveraging the full power of Blueprint by also using implicit model shorthands:

models:
  Widget:
    softDeletes