I am getting started with Laravel 4 and I wish to create a registration functionality.

In this functionality, I want to have a method like 

```
User::is_active()

```

So I can check in the DB if the confirmation\_token is there or not.

In my User model i am creating:

```
public static function is_active(){
    return empty($this->confirmation_token);
}

```

Obviously, I can't use $this inside a static method. 
But how will I use `User::is_active()` statement?