💡 Two Lesser-Known Laravel Tricks: numerify & invisible

#php #laravel #github #opensource

Laravel is full of hidden gems that can make your development smoother. Today, I want to highlight two handy features you might not know about:

1️⃣ `numerify` in Eloquent Factories

The numerify method from Faker lets you replace # characters with random digits.

public function definition(): array
{
    return [
        'phone' => $this->faker->numerify('+##'), // Example output: +20
    ];
}

2️⃣ `invisible` in Migrations

The invisible column modifier hides a column from default SELECT queries while keeping it in the database.

Note: This feature is supported only by the MySQL database engine.

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;

Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->timestamp('email_verified_at')
          ->nullable()
          ->invisible();
});

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Top comments (6)

david duymelinck • Dec 12 '25 • Edited

From the Laravel code

 * @method $this invisible() Specify that the column should be invisible to "SELECT *" (MySQL)

This is a MySQL only feature. So running the migration on Postgres will not have the same effect.
I would be very careful using this database feature. A database agnostic way is to use the $hidden property of the Eloquent model.

Mahmoud Ramadan • Dec 12 '25

You're right—I missed that point. I’ll make sure to highlight it. If you’d like, share your GitHub handle, and I’ll include a mention for you in the README file regarding that point.