What is the proper way to unserialize one column of data in the laravel 5 view

Question

I am building an application where there is a column of data that I am serializing to store in the database because I found no other way to store the data as one object. My form where the data is input checkboxes looks like this.

    <div class="form-group form-check col-sm-6">
        </br>
        <label for="careplan">Care Plan</label></br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="nursecallweekly">   Nurse call weekly</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="nursecallbiweekly">   Nurse call bi-monthly</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="nursecallmonthly">   Nurse call monthly</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="weightcheckdaily">   Weight check daily</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="weightcheckweekly">   Weight check weekly</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="lowerextremity">   Lower extremity edema status</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="dietaryreview">   Dietary review</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="fluidintake">   Fluid intake review</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="bloodpressure">   Blood pressure reading daily</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="bloodpressureweekly">   Blood pressure reading weekly</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="hypertensive">   Hypertensive symptoms check</br>
        <input type ="checkbox" name="careplan[]" value="ptinrweekly">   PT/INR weekly review</br>
    </div>

The care plan has multiple items that can be selected. I grouped them into an array and serialized the array using.

    //Create new Patient information
    $patient = new Patient;
    $patient->first_name = $request->input('first_name');
    $patient->last_name = $request->input('last_name');
    $patient->dob = $request->input('dob');
    $patient->contact_one = $request->input('contact_one');
    $patient->contact_two = $request->input('contact_two');
    $patient->care_giver_one = $request->input('care_giver_one');
    $patient->care_giver_two = $request->input('care_giver_two');
    $patient->enrollment_reason = $request->input('enrollment_reason');
    $care_plan = $request->input('careplan');
    $cp = serialize($care_plan);
    $patient->careplan = $cp;
    $patient->save();

The image at the top is the view. As you can see, the serialized data is returned. I have looked through this forum and none of the posted suggestions worked.

unserialize data in laravel

This page doesn't even come close to what I am trying to do.

https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/eloquent-serialization#date-serialization

This was close but did not share what was done that worked or I don't understand what worked.

https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/laravel/problem-to-unserialize-my-returned-value

UPDATE: SOLUTION THAT WORKED FOR ME

I made a couple of changes that helped and I am 98% of the way there.

This post helped me. Split string in Laravel Framework

I changed this line from this

  $care_plan = $request->input('careplan');

To this

 $patient->careplan = json_encode($request->input('careplan'));

That got me a return from the database of this.

 ["nursecallweekly","nursecallbiweekly","nursecallmonthly"]

and I used this nested loop to parse the string.

    @foreach(explode('","', $patient->careplan) as $plan)
         <li>{{$plan = Str::after($plan,'["')}}</li>
    @endforeach

What displays like this.

   nursecallweekly
   nursecallbiweekly
   nursecallmonthly"]

My only issue now is the trailing bracket.

Solution to the trailing brace

   @foreach(explode('","', $patient->careplan) as $plan)
        @if(Str::contains($plan, '['))
        <li>{{ Str::after($plan,'["') }}</li>
        @else
            <li>{{ Str::before($plan,'"]') }}</li>
        @endif
    @endforeach

Answer 1

You should use Eloquent mutators to do this.

Use a JSON column on your database, let's call it careplan, then in your model do:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Patient extends Model
{
    // ...

    protected $casts = [
        'careplan' => 'array',
    ];

    // ...
}

So now, you will work with an array element, there isn't need to manually serialize/unserialize it from the database anymore. Laravel will convert the array to json when storing and casting it back to array when getting the value from the database. So now:

$patient = new Patient;
$patient->first_name = $request->input('first_name');
// ...
$patient->careplan = $request->input('careplan'); // Laravel will convert it to json for you
$patient->save();

Then you'll see that:

$patient = Patient::find(1);
dd($patient->careplan);

Has been casted back to array.