Two models, two fields, return preferred if present

Been struggling with how to do this the most optimized way possible...

I have two models: Catalog and Application.

Catalog has a field called name.

Application has a field called name.

Both have a relationship with each other.

I am struggling to find a way to create a function i could use across my Laravel application which i would pass application.id to it and it would return a $app->name value based on the following logic:

• if $application->name exists, use this value as the $app->name for the $application object
• otherwise, get the $catalog->name value and use it as the $app->name

Note that I would like to create a component @application() where i can simply pass the $application->id and build the display logic (theming/styling) into it.

Since i display this $app->name in many places, i would like to make it as lightweight as possible to avoid unnecessary queries.

I hope this makes sense! There are probably so many ways to go with it, i am lost at figuring out the way way to do this :(

via Chebli Mohamed