What is Read transformation in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application?

What is Read transformation in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application? In Laravel, read transformation should be understood as part of a larger application architecture rather than as an isolated API call. An accessor can format or derive a value when an attribute is read by application code. A strong understanding includes its purpose, the layer where it belongs, the data or request flow it affects, and the situations where another mechanism may be more appropriate. Practical context: Eloquent attribute transformations let models present or normalize attribute values through reusable model-level logic. The specific focus here is read transformation: An accessor can format or derive a value when an attribute is read by application code. This question is designed to test not only terminology, but also how the concept fits into Laravel's request, application, database, security, or deployment workflow.