How can a Laravel developer implement or use Integer and decimal casts correctly? Explain the flow, key steps, and practical considerations.

How can a Laravel developer implement or use Integer and decimal casts correctly? Explain the flow, key steps, and practical considerations. A practical implementation starts by deciding which application layer owns the responsibility, then using Laravel's framework API consistently, validating input where necessary, authorizing state-changing actions, and testing both successful and failure paths. Numeric casts help keep application-level types consistent when database values are strings or decimal representations. Example pattern: protected function casts(): array { return [ 'is_active' => 'boolean', 'settings' => 'array', ]; } The code is intentionally small; a production implementation should also consider validation, authorization, error handling, logging, monitoring, and test coverage relevant to the feature.