Thanks, that's another 2 days of my life I'll never get back while I get my head around repositories. However, even I can see the power of this pattern, so thanks for your suggestion.

Just a quick question - for simple tasks, injecting a model directly into the controller function like so:

public function index(Model $model)
{
  $datasubset = $model->getDataSubsetFunction(); (defined as public function on the model)
...

works, but there's going to be a reason why it's not a good idea. Can you explain why not? Thanks for your guidance.

You're welcome!

Personally, I normally don't do that for testability. On top of that, if it would venture outside of adding/using query scopes, I wouldn't do it. It all revolves around the original issue of trying to keep things as dry as possible.

Additionally, I tend to only put functions in the model that are directly related to the data in the model. Leaving any real querying for repositories. For example if I had a Location model, an example function would be isOpen() to see if there was data in the object to see if it's open. Or getLatLong() (provided I would keep these separate in the database)

Certainly nothing wrong with in ejecting the model though :) It's all preference really ;)