Scheduled Notifications in DB: The Model

In this step, we'll build the Model that will store our scheduled notifications:

Creating the Migration

Let's start by creating the migration for our Model:

php artisan make:migration create_scheduled_notifications_table

Migration

public function up(): void
{
    Schema::create('scheduled_notifications', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->id();
        $table->foreignId('user_id')->constrained()->cascadeOnDelete();
        $table->string('notification_class');
        $table->morphs('notifiable');
        $table->boolean('sent')->default(0);
        $table->boolean('processing')->default(0);
        $table->dateTime('scheduled_at');
        $table->dateTime('sent_at')->nullable();
        $table->integer('tries')->default(0);
        $table->timestamps();
    });
}

These fields include:

• user_id - the user that the notification is for
• notification_class - the class of the notification that will be sent
• notifiable - the Model that is associated with the notification
• sent - whether the notification has been sent
• processing - whether the notification is currently being processed (for example, if a Job runs too long, we don't want to re-send)
• scheduled_at - the date and time when the notification should be sent (in UTC time that matches Users timezone)
• sent_at - the date and time when the notification was sent (Great for backlog and debugging!)
• tries - the number of times the notification has been attempted to be sent (we'll limit it to 5 attempts)

Creating the Model

Next, we'll create the Model that will be used to interact with the database:

app/Models/ScheduledNotification.php

 
use App\Jobs\ProcessNotificationJob;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\BelongsTo;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\MorphTo;
 
class ScheduledNotification extends Model
{
    protected $fillable = [
        'user_id',
        'notification_class',
        'notifiable_id',
        'notifiable_type',
        'sent',
        'processing',
        'scheduled_at',
        'sent_at',
        'tries',
    ];
 
    protected $casts = [
        'sent' => 'boolean',
        'processing' => 'boolean',
    ];
 
    public function user(): BelongsTo
    {
        return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
    }
 
    public function notifiable(): MorphTo
    {
        return $this->morphTo();
    }
}

Last, we need some relationships to access all the scheduled notifications from the User and Booking Models.

Adding Relationship to User and Booking Models

To allow us to check if a user or a booking has scheduled notifications - we should add a relationship to the Models:

app/Models/User.php

// ...
 
public function scheduledNotifications(): HasMany
{
    return $this->hasMany(ScheduledNotification::class);
}
 
// ...

app/Models/Booking.php

// ...
 
public function scheduledNotifications(): MorphMany
{
    return $this->morphMany(ScheduledNotification::class, 'notifiable');
}
 
// ...

This way we will have the ability to list all upcoming/past notifications for our user or booking by just calling the $user->scheduledNotifications or $booking->scheduledNotifications relationship.