A package for presenting person names

Applications often need to show a person's name in more than one format: full name, first name, initials, mention handle, sorted name, and so on. I created a package called php-person-name to keep that logic in one place.

It is based on the name_of_person gem from Basecamp. They had the same kind of problem: how do you present a person's name in different formats when you only store first and last name?

The public API is small:

<?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"

For Laravel, you can add a name attribute to your model:

<?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];
    }
}

Now the model stores first_name and last_name, while name gives you the formatted versions:

<?php

$user = new User(['first_name' => 'Robin', 'last_name' => 'van der Vleuten'])

echo $user->name->full // Robin van der Vleuten

It is a small helper, but I end up needing this kind of formatting in many applications. The package is available on GitHub.