Creating and Update Laravel Eloquent

Question

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

Answer 1

Updated: Aug 27 2014 - [updateOrCreate Built into core...]

Just in case people are still coming across this... I found out a few weeks after writing this, that this is in fact part of Laravel's Eloquent's core...

Digging into Eloquent’s equivalent method(s). You can see here:

https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/4.2/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php#L553

on :570 and :553

    /**
     * Create or update a record matching the attributes, and fill it with values.
     *
     * @param  array  $attributes
     * @param  array  $values
     * @return static
     */
    public static function updateOrCreate(array $attributes, array $values = array())
    {
        $instance = static::firstOrNew($attributes);

        $instance->fill($values)->save();

        return $instance;
    }

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Old Answer Below

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I am wondering if there is any built in L4 functionality for doing this in some way such as:

$row = DB::table('table')->where('id', '=', $id)->first();
// Fancy field => data assignments here
$row->save();

I did create this method a few weeks back...

// Within a Model extends Eloquent
public static function createOrUpdate($formatted_array) {
    $row = Model::find($formatted_array['id']);
    if ($row === null) {
        Model::create($formatted_array);
        Session::flash('footer_message', "CREATED");
    } else {
        $row->update($formatted_array);
        Session::flash('footer_message', "EXISITING");
    }
    $affected_row = Model::find($formatted_array['id']);
    return $affected_row;
}

I Hope that helps. I would love to see an alternative to this if anyone has one to share. @erikthedev_