A package for presenting person names

When building applications, you'll probably have to show an user's name in one or more formats (first, last, initials, etc.). I've created a package called php-person-name, that will make this a lot easier in Laravel (or any PHP framework).

It is based on the name_of_person gem from the awesome people at Basecamp. They had a similar issue in their application; how do we present a person's name in different formats if we only have a first and a last name.

It's public API is quite simple and can be summarized in the following snippet.

php
<?php
$name = new PersonName::make('David Heinemeier Hansson')
echo $name->full        // "David Heinemeier Hansson"
echo $name->first       // "David"
echo $name->last        // "Heinemeier Hansson"
echo $name->initials    // "DHH"
echo $name->familiar    // "David H."
echo $name->abbreviated // "D. Heinemeier Hansson"
echo $name->sorted      // "Heinemeier Hansson, David"
echo $name->mentionable // "davidh"
echo $name->possessive  // "David Heinemeier Hansson's"

Need integration with Laravel? Just use the following to add a name attribute to your models.

php
<?php
use Webstronauts\PersonName\PersonName;
class User extends Model
{
    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $fillable = [
        'name', 'first_name', 'last_name',
    ];
    /**
     * Return a PersonName instance composed from the `first_name` and `last_name` attributes.
     *
     * @return PersonName
     */
    public function getNameAttribute()
    {
        return new PersonName($this->first_name, $this->last_name);
    }
    /**
     * Sets the `first_name` and `last_name` attributes from a full name.
     *
     * @param  string $name
     * @return void
     */
    public function setNameAttribute($name)
    {
        $fullName = PersonName::make($name);
        [$this->first_name, $this->last_name] = $fullName ? [$fullName->first, $fullName->last] : [null, null];
    }
}

As you can see, you'll just have to store the first_name and last_name attributes and you'll can generate all those variants through name.

php
<?php
$user = new User(['first_name' => 'Robin', 'last_name' => 'van der Vleuten'])
echo $user->name->full // Robin van der Vleuten

A small but nifty helper that could be useful in almost any application. Go check it out on Github and don't forget to star it.