Insert data into database manually inside a laravel 5 controller without a form

Question

I need to insert some data into a sqlite database, manually inside a (Laravel 5) controller and without a form.

I've tried with this methods:

1st:

DB::insert('insert into cars values (?, ?, ?)', [1, "Infinity", "MS500"]);

2nd:

Car::create([
    'brand' => 'Infinity',
    'model' => 'MS500',
]);

3rd:

$car = new Car();
$car->setAttribute('brand', 'Infinity');
$car->setAttribute('model', 'MS500');
$car->save();

The 1st method works, but I need to insert thousand of rows, and the time and performance is not so good.

The 2nd and 3rd methods give me this error:

Missing argument 2 for Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model::setAttribute(), called in /var/www/html/AppLaravel/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Concerns/HasAttributes.php on line 525 and defined

I don't know what means this error, I have found a lot about it, and about to populate the data into the database manually, with no results.

This is the model class:

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Car extends Model
{
    const CREATED_AT = null;
    const UPDATED_AT = null;
    protected $fillable = ['brand', 'model'];
}

This is the migration class:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreateCarsTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('cars', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('brand');
            $table->text('model');
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('cars');
    }
}

EDIT

I've tested with the bulk insertion too:

4th

$arr = [
    [
        'brand' => 'Infinity',
        'model' => 'MS500',
    ],
    [
        'brand' => 'Toyota',
        'model' => 'LK2500',
    ],
];

DB::insert($arr);

... but I got this new error:

 ErrorException (E_NOTICE) Array to string conversion

Answer 1

For an extensive array of arrays with the data (let's say 10000 rows):

$arr = [
    [
        'brand' => 'Infinity',
        'model' => 'MS500',
    ],
    [
        'brand' => 'Toyota',
        'model' => 'LK2500',
    ],
    ...
    // 10000 rows
];

I separated the amount of data to insert in chunks of 500, and I inserted into the database inside of transactions.

$div = 500;

for ($i = 0; $i < intdiv(count($arr), $div); $i++) {

    $new_arr = [];

    for ($j = ($i * $div); $j < (($i + 1) * $div); $j++) {
        $new_arr[] = $arr[$j];
    }

    DB::transaction(function () use ($new_arr) {
        DB::table('hotels')->insert($new_arr);
    });
}

I've done this task of this way because SQLite restrict the amount of insertions at the same time. the performance and the speed with this solution is very high.

Edit

For all you collection fans:

collect($arr)->chunk(500)->each(function ($chunk) { 
    DB::transaction(function () use ($chunk) {
        DB::table('hotels')->insert($chunk->toArray());
    });
}).