Casting

Arkorm supports attribute casting to automatically transform values as they are read from or written to the model. This is useful for normalizing data formats, such as converting database values to JavaScript types.

Use the casts map on models to normalize values as they are read/written.

Built-in casts

Supported cast types:

• string
• number
• boolean
• date — casts to a native JavaScript Date.
• datetime — casts to a DateTime instance from @h3ravel/support.
• json
• array

import { Model } from 'arkormx'

export class User extends Model {
  protected override casts = {
    isActive: 'boolean',
    profile: 'json',
    createdAt: 'date',
    publishedAt: 'datetime',
    tags: 'array',
  } as const
}

The datetime cast reads values into a DateTime (a dayjs-backed wrapper) for ergonomic date manipulation, and writes them back as a native Date for persistence. Import DateTime from @h3ravel/support when you need to construct or type values:

import { DateTime } from '@h3ravel/support'

const user = await User.query().findOrFail(1)
const publishedAt = user.getAttribute('publishedAt') as DateTime
publishedAt.add(7, 'day') // DateTime helpers are available

user.setAttribute('publishedAt', DateTime.now())
await user.save() // persisted as a Date

Custom casts

You can define custom casts by providing an object or class with get and set methods. The get method transforms the raw value from the database into the desired format, while the set method transforms the value before it is stored in the database.

import { Model } from 'arkormx'

const centsCast = {
  get: (value: unknown) => Number(value ?? 0) / 100,
  set: (value: unknown) => Math.round(Number(value ?? 0) * 100),
}

export class Product extends Model {
  protected override casts = {
    price: centsCast,
  } as const
}

The set transform is applied once when you assign a value and get once when you read it, so a cast round-trips correctly through save() — reading price right after product.fill({ price: 100 }).save() returns 100, not the stored 10000. There is no need to re-fetch the row for the value to read back correctly, even for non-idempotent casts (money, arrays) where re-applying set would corrupt the value.

Cast + mutator interaction

Arkorm applies casts and mutators in this order:

• Read (getAttribute): cast get first, then mutator/accessor get
• Write (setAttribute): mutator/accessor set first, then cast set

This keeps mutators expressive while preserving consistent storage formats.

Property sugar

Proxy-based property access uses the same pipeline:

const user = await User.query().firstOrFail()

user.isActive = 1
console.log(user.isActive) // true (boolean cast)