I have Helper class in my project. I have different two tables and I wrote sample function for get all needed details user by id.

Code of function:

public static function user($  id){     $  data = ['id' => null, 'role' => null, 'name' => null, 'email' => null, 'photo' => null, 'user_id' => null];     if(User::find($  id) !== null){          $  student = Student::where('id_user', $  id)->get()->toJson();          $  university = University::where('user_id', $  id)->get()->toJson();          if(mb_strlen($  student) > 5){             $  student = json_decode($  student);             $  student = $  student[0];             $  data = [                 'id'      => $  student->id,                 'role'    => 'student',                 'name'    => $  student->name,                 'email'   => $  student->email,                 'photo'   => $  student->photo,                 'user_id' => $  student->id_user,             ];         }          elseif (mb_strlen($  university) > 5) {             $  university = json_decode($  university);             $  university = $  university[0];             $  data = [                 'id'      => $  university->id,                 'role'    => 'university',                 'name'    => $  university->university_name,                 'email'   => $  university->emp_email,                 'photo'   => $  university->logo,                 'user_id' => $  university->user_id,             ];         }         $  data = json_decode(json_encode($  data));         return $  data;     }     $  data = json_decode(json_encode($  data));     return $  data; } 

And using this function I will create functions for check user role for example is_student(),is_university() and is_admin() using my user() function. How can be shorted and optimized my user() function code? Thanks for help.