title: What's the correct way to provide default values for Laravel model fields outside of MySQL?
body: <p>I have a Laravel model which has various fields that default to NULL in the database and cannot easily be changed for legacy reasons. I would like to always return these as an empty string, for example, when returning JSON back from my route. Is there a "standard" way to define defaults in a model somehow?</p>
  
  <p>Another case might be that a certain field always needs some processing done on it before being returned, can this also be defined in a similar way? Thanks.</p>