Laravel 5 Creating a New Record that BelongsTo 3 O

Question

I have 4 tables Users, Regions, Rentals, and Locations

1. Each User hasMany Rentals
2. Each Region hasMany Rentals
3. Each Location hasMany Rentals
4. Basically a Rental belongsTo all 3 tables

Region - id, name Location - id, street_address, city, province, postal_code Rental - id, region_id, location_id, user_id

I've set up the hasMany and belongsTo relationships between these tables and tested them in Tinker, but now I want to create and update rentals.

• The region_id is passed up through the request - $regionId
• The user_id is the Auth::id() - $userId
• The location_id is found by taking only() part of the request and doing a check of the locations table, and if it exists I grab the location_id - $locationId
• The remaining post data is grabbed using only() again for that data - $rentalData

All this works to this point, but how do you create and update rentals using the ids and data I've extracted, this almost works:

Location::find($locationId)->rentals()->create($rentalData);

But, need to get the $locationId and $userId into the mix somehow and it doesn't seem right to make them fillable.

I've been playing with it like this so far:

// Retrieve the chosen rental region
$regionId = Region::find($request->input('region_id'));

// Retrieve authenticated user id
$userId = Auth::id();

// Retrieve rental location data
$rentalLocationData = $request->only('street_address', 'city', 'province', 'country', 'postal_code');

// Does the location already exist? If not create and persist it to the database
$locationData = RentalLocation::firstOrCreate($rentalLocationData);
$locationId = $locationData->id;

// Create the rental...?
$rental = Location::find($locationId)->rentals()->create($rentalData);

UPDATE

So I can keep going dropped using the ORM and did this, but I'd still like to understand how Eloquent works beyond the basics I learnt watching Laracast videos so any help would be appreciated, right now I just find it really confusing:

// Retrieve rental location data from the request
$requestData = $request->only('street_address', 'city', 'province', 'country', 'postal_code');

// Does the location already exist? If not create and persist it to the database
$rentalLocation = RentalLocation::firstOrCreate($requestData);


// Retrieve the foreign key ids not included in request
$foreignKeyIds = [ 'user_id' => Auth::id(), 'rental_location_id' => $rentalLocation->id ];

// Retrieve request data for creating a rental, and merge with foreign key ids
$requestData = $request->only('region_id', 'stall', 'level', 'description');
$rentalData = array_merge($foreignKeyIds, $requestData);

// Insert new rental with all field attributes included
DB::table('rentals')->insert($rentalData);

UPDATE

What about this solutions?

RentalRequest checks the region_id exists, and the user will always be the Auth::user().

public function store(RentalRequest $request)
{
    // Retrieve the authenticated user
    $User = Auth::user();

    // Retrieve rental location data from request
    $requestData = $request->only('street_address', 'city', 'province', 'country', 'postal_code');

    // Does the location already exist? If not create and persist it to the database
    $RentalLocation = RentalLocation::firstOrCreate($requestData);

    // Retrieve the region for inserting the rental
    $Region = Region::find($request->input('region_id'));

    // Retrieve rental data from request
    $requestData = $request->only('stall', 'level', 'description');

    // Create a new rental, fill with request data, and add relationships
    $rental = new Rental;
    $rental->fill($requestData);
    $rental->owner()->associate($User);
    $rental->location()->associate($RentalLocation);

    // Persist rental to database
    $rental = $Region->rentals()->save($rental);

    // Return rental data for capture by AngularJS interceptor
    // TODO: filter rental data don't need it all returned to client
    return response()->json([
        'rental' => $rental,
        'action' => 'rental_registered',
        'message' => trans('rental.registered')
    ]);
}

Answer 1

I don't understand why to make it so complex?

try this:

Solution 1

$User = User::find(Auth::id()); 
if(!$User) {
    return 'no user';
}

$Region = Region::find($request->input('region_id'));
if(!$Region) {
    return 'no region';
}

$locationData = $request->only('street_address', 'city', 'province', 'country', 'postal_code');
$Location = Location::firstOrCreate($locationData);

$rentalData = [
    'user_id' => $User->id, 
    'region_id' => $Region->id, 
    'location_id' => $Location->id
];
$Rental = Rental::firstOrCreate($rentalData);

Solution 2

// ->remember() for caching request to prevent many queries, for faster result use apc cache in config files, no need to use memcache when You're using 1 app server

if(!User::where('id', '=', Auth::id())->remember(1440)->exists()) {
    return 'no user';
}

if(!Region::where('id', '=', $request->input('region_id'))->remember(1440)->exists()) {
    return 'no user';
}

$locationData = $request->only('street_address', 'city', 'province', 'country', 'postal_code');
$Location = Location::firstOrCreate($locationData);

$rentalData = [
    'user_id' => $User->id, 
    'region_id' => $Region->id, 
    'location_id' => $Location->id
];
$Rental = Rental::firstOrCreate($rentalData);