Support Dot Notation for Hiding JSON Attributes in Models

[faridibin]

Hello,

Currently, Laravel's $hidden property in models doesn't support dot notation for hiding nested attributes within JSON columns. This means we cannot easily hide specific nested fields from JSON/array serialization.

Current Behaviour

class User extends Model
{
    protected $hidden = [
        'settings.api_key', // This doesn't work for JSON columns
        'metadata.secret'
    ];
}

Proposed Behaviour

class User extends Model
{
    protected $hidden = [
        'settings.api_key', // Would hide 'api_key' from the 'settings' JSON column
        'metadata.secret'  // Would hide 'secret' from the 'metadata' JSON column
    ];
}

Use Cases

1. Hiding sensitive data within JSON columns (API keys, internal metadata)
2. Selectively exposing parts of complex JSON structures in APIs
3. Maintaining cleaner API responses without creating separate resources/transformers

Questions for Discussion

1. Would this feature be valuable to the Laravel community?
2. Are there any potential downsides or edge cases to consider?
3. Should this be implemented in the core, or would it be better as a separate package?
4. How should this interact with existing $hidden functionality?

I'm willing to work on implementing this feature if there's interest from the community. 😄

[shaedrich]

Why two times the same question? oO
#54253