Rearranging JSON output in Laravel - json

Question

There are a few very similar questions, but not this exact thing. Let's start with my model:
Contest (hasMany Event, belongsToMany Player)
Player (hasMany Event, belongsToMany Contest, belongsToMany Event)
Event (belongsTo Contest, belongsToMany Players->withPivot('score)) (actually called ContestEvent since Event is a Laravel class)
I'm writing an API to do other stuff with the data. Right now I get this output from a given Contest:
{
"id": "1",
"owner_id": "1",
"name": "Some Contest",
"start_date": "2013-08-09",
"end_date": "2013-08-31",
"is_public": "1",
"is_finished": "0",
"players": [
{
"id": "1",
"first_name": "Bob",
"last_name": "Smith",
"initial_name": "Bob S",
"pivot": {
"contest_id": "1",
"user_id": "1"
}
}
],
"events": [
{
"id": "1",
"name": "Stage 1",
"date": "2013-08-01",
"players": [
{
"id": "1",
"first_name": "Bob",
"last_name": "Smith",
"initial_name": "Bob S",
"pivot": {
"contest_event_id": "1",
"user_id": "1",
"score": "5"
}
}
]
}
]
}
The pivot part is junk data, except for the score part under events. I can hide the whole pivot part with $hidden, but I want to access the score value one step up, outside of the pivot array.
I've messed around with $append and getFooAttribute(), but no success so far -- I can't quite figure out how to get Eloquent to do what I want. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Rather than rearranging my model, I discovered Fractal, which made creating custom JSON output exactly the way you want it really easy.