Add a custom attribute to a Laravel / Eloquent model on load?

The problem is caused by the fact that the Model's toArray() method ignores any accessors which do not directly relate to a column in the underlying table.

As Taylor Otwell mentioned here, "This is intentional and for performance reasons." However there is an easy way to achieve this:

class EventSession extends Eloquent {

    protected $table = 'sessions';
    protected $appends = array('availability');

    public function getAvailabilityAttribute()
    {
        return $this->calculateAvailability();  
    }
}

Any attributes listed in the $appends property will automatically be included in the array or JSON form of the model, provided that you've added the appropriate accessor.

Old answer (for Laravel versions < 4.08):

The best solution that I've found is to override the toArray() method and either explicity set the attribute:

class Book extends Eloquent {

    protected $table = 'books';

    public function toArray()
    {
        $array = parent::toArray();
        $array['upper'] = $this->upper;
        return $array;
    }

    public function getUpperAttribute()
    {
        return strtoupper($this->title);    
    }

}

or, if you have lots of custom accessors, loop through them all and apply them:

class Book extends Eloquent {

    protected $table = 'books';

    public function toArray()
    {
        $array = parent::toArray();
        foreach ($this->getMutatedAttributes() as $key)
        {
            if ( ! array_key_exists($key, $array)) {
                $array[$key] = $this->{$key};   
            }
        }
        return $array;
    }

    public function getUpperAttribute()
    {
        return strtoupper($this->title);    
    }

}

The last thing on the Laravel Eloquent doc page is:

protected $appends = array('is_admin');

That can be used automatically to add new accessors to the model without any additional work like modifying methods like ::toArray().

Just create getFooBarAttribute(...) accessor and add the foo_bar to $appends array.