Using Spatie Valuestore to hold frequently accessed settings

Domain specific settings

This was a reply posted to the Laracasts forum. I know I will use this in the future, so documented here also as a reminder to myself as much as anything.

Install Valuestore composer require spatie/valuestore

In AppServiceProvider register method;

 public function register()
 {
   $this->app->singleton('valuestore', function () {
     return \Spatie\Valuestore\Valuestore::make(storage_path('app/settings.json'));
   });

   $values = $this->app->valuestore->all();

   $this->app->bind('settings', function () use($values) {
     return $values;
   });
 }

What we have in the app container is a singleton that points to the valuestore class. When you use that, you are directly interacting with the settings stored in the file.

When you use the settings bound to the app container, you are using a cached version of the values as they were at the start of the request cycle (as an associated array).

So instead of writing the current Euro rate to a database row, put it in the valuestore instead;

app('valuestore')->put('EUR', $rate)

and in your model when you want to apply this;

public function getPriceEUR()
{
  return intval($this->usd_price / app('settings')['EUR'] * 100);}
}

By using settings and not valuestore the file will only be accessed once and not for each iterated product in a collection.

Of course you now have a place where you can store other currencies or any other application settings using the full features of the Valuestore package.

Be careful with decimals when converting . See https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/int-conversion-issue