Find or Create with Eloquent

by

Below is the original accepted answer for: Laravel-4

There is already a method findOrFail available in Laravel and when this method is used it throws ModelNotFoundException on fail but in your case you can do it by creating a method in your model, for example, if you have a User model then you just put this function in the model

// Put this in any model and use
// Modelname::findOrCreate($id);
public static function findOrCreate($id)
{
    $obj = static::find($id);
    return $obj ?: new static;
}

From your controller, you can use

$user =  User::findOrCreate(5);
$user->first_name="John";
$user->last_name="Doe";
$user->save();

If a user with id of 5 exists, then it’ll be updated, otherwise a new user will be created but the id will be last_user_id + 1 (auto incremented).

This is another way to do the same thing:

public function scopeFindOrCreate($query, $id)
{
    $obj = $query->find($id);
    return $obj ?: new static;
}

Instead of creating a static method, you can use a scope in the Model, so the method in the Model will be scopeMethodName and call Model::methodName(), same as you did in the static method, for example

$user =  User::findOrCreate(5);

Update:

The firstOrCreate is available in Laravel 5x, the answer is too old and it was given for Laravel-4.0 in 2013.

In Laravel 5.3, the firstOrCreate method has the following declaration:

public function firstOrCreate(array $attributes, array $values = [])

Which means you can use it like this:

User::firstOrCreate(['email' => $email], ['name' => $name]);

User’s existence will be only checked via email, but when created, the new record will save both email and name.

API Docs

More Related Contents:

  1. Laravel Check If Related Model Exists
  2. How to alias a table in Laravel Eloquent queries (or using Query Builder)?
  3. Laravel Eloquent: How to order results of related models?
  4. Laravel 4: how to “order by” using Eloquent ORM [duplicate]
  5. How to set a default attribute value for a Laravel / Eloquent model?
  6. Laravel Eloquent – Attach vs Sync
  7. How to create a subquery using Laravel Eloquent?
  8. Update without touching timestamps (Laravel)
  9. Eloquent model mass update
  10. How can I query raw via Eloquent?
  11. Laravel Many to many self referencing table only works one way
  12. Laravel one to many relation with a one to one relation
  13. Bulk Insertion in Laravel using eloquent ORM
  14. Laravel blank white screen
  15. Laravel, sync() – how to sync an array and also pass additional pivot fields?
  16. Laravel 5.2 – Use a String as a Custom Primary Key for Eloquent Table becomes 0
  17. How to bind parameters to a raw DB query in Laravel that’s used on a model?
  18. Composer killed while updating
  19. belongsToMany relationship in Laravel across multiple databases
  20. Friendship system with Laravel : Many to Many relationship
  21. Laravel preg_match(): No ending delimiter ‘/’ found
  22. Laravel merge relationships
  23. Laravel Eloquent sort by relation table column
  24. Laravel ORM from self referencing table get N level hierarchy JSON
  25. Laravel Eloquent: How to get only certain columns from joined tables
  26. Laravel Eager Loading – Load only specific columns
  27. Laravel catch Eloquent “Unique” field error
  28. How to get last insert id in Eloquent ORM laravel
  29. How Can I Remove “public/index.php” in the Laravel Url generated? [duplicate]
  30. Merge ‘with’ and ‘whereHas’ in Laravel 5

Leave a Comment