Saving one to one relation in Laravel

Question

A User has one (or zero) Company, and a Company belongs to one and only one User. I try to save a company for a user but it adds a new entry in database every time I re-trigger the save method. It's a one to one relation, so I though save method on User.

So Company has one method user():

public function user() {     return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'user_id'); } 

And User has one method company():

public function company() {     return $this->hasOne(Company::class, 'user_id'); } 

I'm trying to save (so create or update) a user's company like this (in a Controller):

$company = new Company(); $company->name = 'Test'; User::findOrFail(1)->company()->save($company); 

First time I run this code it creates the entry in database (OK), but second time it adds a new entry for the same user (Not OK). I thought it will only update the database entry.

Is it a glitch (or something I don't understand in one to one relation) in Laravel or am I doing something wrong? (I think and hope it's the second purpose)

Answer 1

Creating and updating need to treat differently. So check the existence of company attribute first.

$user = User::with('company')->findOrFail(1); if ($user->company === null) {     $company = new Company(['name' => 'Test']);     $user->company()->save($company); } else {     $user->company->update(['name' => 'Test']); } 

Note that hasOne() does not guarantee that you will have one-to-one relationship, it just telling Eloquent how to create query. It works even you have multiple Company refer to same User, in such case when you call $user->company you will get first Company in the result data set from database.

Answer 2

$user = User::findOrFail(1); $company = $user->company ?: new Company; $company->name = 'Test'; $user->company()->save($company);