Creating and Update Laravel Eloquent

Question

What's the shorthand for inserting a new record or updating if it exists?

<?php

$shopOwner = ShopMeta::where('shopId', '=', $theID)
    ->where('metadataKey', '=', 2001)->first();

if ($shopOwner == null) {
    // Insert new record into database
} else {
    // Update the existing record
}

Answer 1

Here's a full example of what "lu cip" was talking about:

$user = User::firstOrNew(array('name' => Input::get('name')));
$user->foo = Input::get('foo');
$user->save();

Below is the updated link of the docs which is on the latest version of Laravel

Docs here: Updated link

Answer 2

2020 Update

As in Laravel >= 5.3, if someone is still curious how to do so in easy way it's possible by using: updateOrCreate().

For example for the asked question you can use something like:

$matchThese = ['shopId'=>$theID,'metadataKey'=>2001];
ShopMeta::updateOrCreate($matchThese,['shopOwner'=>'New One']);

Above code will check the table represented by ShopMeta, which will be most likely shop_metas unless not defined otherwise in the model itself.

And it will try to find entry with

column shopId = $theID

and

column metadateKey = 2001

and if it finds then it will update column shopOwner of found row to New One.

If it finds more than one matching rows then it will update the very first row that means which has lowest primary id.

If not found at all then it will insert a new row with:

shopId = $theID,metadateKey = 2001 and shopOwner = New One

Notice Check your model for $fillable and make sure that you have every column name defined there which you want to insert or update and rest columns have either default value or its id column auto incremented one.

Otherwise it will throw error when executing above example:

Illuminate\Database\QueryException with message 'SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1364 Field '...' doesn't have a default value (SQL: insert into `...` (`...`,.., `updated_at`, `created_at`) values (...,.., xxxx-xx-xx xx:xx:xx, xxxx-xx-xx xx:xx:xx))'

As there would be some field which will need value while inserting new row and it will not be possible, as either it's not defined in $fillable or it doesn't have a default value.

For more reference please see Laravel Documentation at: https://laravel.com/docs/5.3/eloquent

One example from there is:

// If there's a flight from Oakland to San Diego, set the price to $99.
// If no matching model exists, create one.
$flight = App\Flight::updateOrCreate(
    ['departure' => 'Oakland', 'destination' => 'San Diego'],
    ['price' => 99]
);

which pretty much clears everything.

Query Builder Update

Someone has asked if it is possible using Query Builder in Laravel. Here is reference for Query Builder from Laravel docs.

Query Builder works exactly the same as Eloquent so anything which is true for Eloquent is true for Query Builder as well. So for this specific case, just use the same function with your query builder like so:

$matchThese = array('shopId'=>$theID,'metadataKey'=>2001);
DB::table('shop_metas')::updateOrCreate($matchThese,['shopOwner'=>'New One']);

Of course, don't forget to add DB facade:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

OR

use DB;