Laravel Eloquent One-To-Many

Question

I'm new to Laravel and I'm trying to make a simple CMS system. I made the following models which are one-to-many related:

Page (id, name, blocks)

public function blocks() {
    return $this->hasMany('App\Block');
}

Block (id, name, displayName, content)

public function page() {
    return $this->belongsTo('App\Page');
}

Now I want to create a page and set the blocks right away. I'm getting a $request object looking like this:

{ 
   "name": "Page name",
   "blocks": [
      {
         "name": "block name",
         "displayName": "Display Name",
         "content": "Some HTML content"
      }
   ]
}

Now, I'm trying to save these all to the database, but I'm running in a lot of errors.

So far, I concluded I have to iterate over every 'block' and actually create a new Block . But I'm not exactly sure how to save it to the database.

Do I save the page first, then add the Blocks or first the blocks and then the page. I'm getting a bit confused.

Answer 1

First, make sure you have a page_id column in the blocks table and the foreign key constraint like this :

public function up()
{
    Schema::create('blocks', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->increments('id');
        // your fields here
        $table->integer('page_id')->unsigned();
        $table->timestamps();

        $table->foreign('page_id')
            ->references('id')
            ->on('pages')
            ->onDelete('cascade');
    });
}

Second, you have to save the page first to the database, and then add to blocks to the page. Because you need the page_id when you create the blocks.

Finally,

You may use the createMany method to create multiple related models. See Laravel docs

Example:

$page = App\Page::create([
    'name' => 'name',
]);

$blocks = $page->blocks()->createMany([
    [
        'name' => 'name1',
        'displayName' => 'displayName1',
        'content' => 'content1'
    ],
    [
        'name' => 'name2',
        'displayName' => 'displayName2',
        'content' => 'content2'
    ],
]);

// to get all blocks from the request
$blocks = $page->blocks()->createMany(request('blocks'));

Answer 2

Try using createMany method. Do it like this. You can refer docs .

$page = Page::create($request->only('name'));

$page->blocks()->createMany($request->get('blocks'));