Posted on Oct 19, 2021 • Edited on Sep 10, 2022

Create A Running Number

You may come across, to have a running number, case id or reference number of your records, so that you can easily remember them - especially to your users. This can come in various formatting.

But today I'm going to show you how simplest setup could help you save a day. Mine save more minutes, since this already few projects implemented - I just don't have to the time to make it as a package.

Now, let's assuming you want to create with the following format:

A-21-00001 where A is your record reference abbreviation / prefix, 21 is the year, and 00001 is your running number / reference / case id.

Model & Migration

php artisan make:model RunningNumber -m

This will create a new model & migration. Just update the model & migration as following:

<?php namespace App\Models; use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model; class RunningNumber extends Model { const TYPES = [ 'approval', 'reject', ]; const TYPE_PREFIX = [ 'approval' => 'APRV', 'reject' => 'RJCT', ]; }

<?php use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration; use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint; use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema; class CreateRunningNumberTable extends Migration { /** * Run the migrations. * * @return void */ public function up() { Schema::create('running_numbers', function (Blueprint $table) { $table->id(); $table->year('year'); $table->unsignedInteger('number')->default(0); $table->string('type')->nullable(); $table->timestamps(); }); } /** * Reverse the migrations. * * @return void */ public function down() { Schema::dropIfExists('running_numbers'); } }

Now you are done for model setup for Running Number.

The Generator

Next, from your model, we need a method to be call, to generate the running number for your records.

Let's add the following snippet in the RunningNumber model:

 public static function generate(string $type) { $type = strtoupper($type); if (! in_array($type, self::TYPES)) { throw new \Exception('Undefined running number type.'); } $number = 0; $year = date('Y'); if (! RunningNumber::where('type', $type)->where('year', $year)->exists()) { RunningNumber::create([ 'type' => $type, 'number' => $number, 'year' => $year, ]); } $running_number = RunningNumber::where('type', $type)->where('year', $year)->first(); $running_number->number++; $running_number->save(); $number = $running_number->number; $number = str_pad($number, 5, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT); // A-21-00001 return RunningNumber::TYPE_PREFIX[$type].'-'.date('y').'-'.$number; }

Usage

Once you are done, you may don't want your records to manually trigger above method. You can do the following in your records model:

<?php namespace App\Models; use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model; class Submission extends Model { protected static function booted() { static::creating(function ($submission) { $submission->case_id = RunningNumber::generate($submission->type); }); } }