Eloquent casts decimal as string

I just spent some time analyzing this issue because my Laravel model shows database decimal columns as strings.

The important thing is that adding typecasting to float in the model does fix it, but if you were like me, you noticed dd(\App\SomeModel::someScope()->get()); still shows those decimal columns as strings after adding typecasting in the model.

When these values are sent to the client, they are integers, so the typecasting did fix the original problem, thus allowing my JavaScript to receive Number not String.

I am just making this answer so a person doesn't waste time due to focusing on dd() output. I investigated solutions about the PDO driver, and while some perhaps have merit, it isn't a big deal because the real database outputs are cast to the correct type.

According to this thread on Laravel's github repository: https://github.com/laravel/framework/issues/11780

It seems to be a PDO driver issue. Automatically casting decimals to strings. People in that thread said that it was a problem with the mysql 5.2 driver and some rolled back to 5.1. If you're on your own server it you'll be able to downgrade. Otherwise you'll have to cast it to float on model level.

You need to define in your model which fields need to be cast to a primitive attribute.

protected $casts = [
    'my_decimal' => 'float',
];

The $casts property on your model provides a convenient method of converting attributes to common data types. The $casts property should be an array where the key is the name of the attribute being cast and the value is the type you wish to cast the column to. The supported cast types are: integer, real, float, double, string, boolean, object, array, collection, date, datetime, and timestamp

There is a really good explanation here:

https://mattstauffer.com/blog/laravel-5.0-eloquent-attribute-casting/

Also there is an explanation in the docs:

https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/eloquent-mutators#attribute-casting