add model relationship without save

Question

I have the next relationship User hasMany Contacts. In normal situation is use $user->contacts()->save($contact) to add and save a contact to the user, but I need to associate contacts to users without save the models (User and Contacts).

edit:

I need to build a plant that receives one of such methods and return an XML a collection of templates, only in some of these models will be stored at postiriori.

Answer 1

You can use the associate on your model with belongsTo.

$contact= Contact::find(10);

$user->account()->associate($contact);

$user->save(); // You do need to update your user

Source: http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent