How to check if a record is new in Laravel?

Question

I recently started using Eloquent.

When I used PHP Active Record, there was a nice function that checked if a record was loaded from the database or is a new instan

Answer 1

Your model object has an attribute exactly designed for that. It's wasRecentlyCreated :

$item = Item::firstOrCreate(['title' => 'Example Item']);

if ($item->wasRecentlyCreated === true) {
    // item wasn't found and have been created in the database
} else {
    // item was found and returned from the database
}

For more clarification between the way exists variable works vs wasRecentlyCreated variable (copied from the comment by CJ Dennis below)

 /* Creating a model */ 
 $my_model = new MyModel; 
 $my_model->exists === false; 
 $my_model->wasRecentlyCreated === false; 
 $my_model->save(); 
 $my_model->exists === true; 
 $my_model->wasRecentlyCreated === true;

As opposed to if a model was loaded from a previous request:

/* Loading a Model */ 
$my_model = MyModel::first(); 
$my_model->exists === true; 
$my_model->wasRecentlyCreated === false;