Laravel Eloquent relationship object stale even th

Question

I'm using Laravel 5.7 and have a one-to-one relationship between 2 eloquent models.

I have this simple function that works well, and the correct values persist to the database:

public function saveMarketingOriginInfo(Contact $contact, $data) {
    $contact->marketingOrigin()->create($data);        
    $this->makeOtherChangesByReference($contact->marketingOrigin);
    $contact->marketingOrigin->save();
    return $contact->marketingOrigin; 
}

However, when writing a functional test for it, I noticed that the object that it returns is stale (doesn't have the correct values in its properties).

My tests only pass if I change the return statement to return \App\Models\MarketingOrigin::find($contact->id);.

(MarketingOrigin uses 'contact_id' as primary key.)

What am I doing wrong?

How can I return the same object that was just saved in the previous line ($contact->marketingOrigin->save();) without making a database read query (find())?

---

Update to respond to comments:

protected $table = 'marketing_origins';//MarketingOrigin class
protected $primaryKey = 'contact_id';
protected $guarded = [];
public function contact() {
    return $this->belongsTo('App\Models\Contact');
}

The test:

public function testSaveMarketingOriginInfo() {
    $helper = new \App\Helpers\SignupHelper();
    $contactId = 92934;
    $contact = factory(\App\Models\Contact::class)->create(['id' => $contactId]);
    $leadMagnetType = 'LMT';
    $audience = 'a60907';
    $hiddenMktgFields = [
        'audience' => $audience,
        'leadMagnetType' => $leadMagnetType
    ];
    $result = $helper->saveMarketingOriginInfo($contact, $hiddenMktgFields);
    $this->assertEquals($result->contact_id, $contactId, 'contact_id did not get saved');
    $this->assertEquals($result->campaignId, '6075626793661');
    $this->assertEquals($result->leadMagnetType, $leadMagnetType);
    $marketingOrigin = \App\Models\MarketingOrigin::findOrFail($contactId);
    $this->assertEquals($marketingOrigin->adsetId, '6088011244061');
    $this->assertEquals($marketingOrigin->audience, $audience);
    $this->assertEquals($marketingOrigin, $result, 'This is the assertion that fails; some properties of the object are stale');
}

Answer 1

This is because the relationship has not been loaded yet.

You could try $contact->load('marketingOrigin'); to eager load the relationship:

public function saveMarketingOriginInfo(Contact $contact, $data) {
    $contact->marketingOrigin()->create($data);        
    $this->makeOtherChangesByReference($contact->marketingOrigin);
    $contact->marketingOrigin->save();
    $contact->load('marketingOrigin'); // <---- eager load the relationship
    return $contact->marketingOrigin; 
}