Best practice for abstracting database interaction in Laravel 4

Question

I currently have a situation where a user is able to complete a form which can result in the creation of several different models. For example, they post an advert of a car for sale, but in doing so, they needed to create a new brand and also a new model of car (as these did not yet exist in the database).

At the moment, this form is being dealt with in an 'AdvertController'. I now want to abstract my database interaction into a respository. My questions are as follows...

1. Should I have one repository for database interactions, or one for each model?
2. If one for each model, which file (controller or repository) should handle the logic which determines whether a new model needs to be created.

In other words, which of the following workflows is best practice (if indeed, either)?

(Assume a database with the following relationships: Advert m-1 CarModel m-1 Brand)

Form completed -> Advert Controller
AdvertController -> tells CarModel repository to create new CarModel model
CarModel_Respository -> creates new CarModel
AdvertController -> sets CarModel relationship with the newly created brand
AdvertController -> tells Brand repository to create new CarModel model
Brand_Respository -> creates new Brand
AdvertController -> tells Advert repository to create new Advert model
Advert_Repository -> creates new Advert
AdvertController -> sets Advert relationship with CarModel
AdvertController -> displays success message

OR... something like this...

Form completed -> AdvertController.
AdvertController -> sends data to DatabaseRepository
DatabaseRepository -> creates new Brand model
DatabaseRepository -> creates new CarModel model
DatabaseRepository -> sets CarModel brand_id as the newly created brand
DatabaseRepository -> creates new Advert model
DatabaseRepository -> sets Advert car_model_id as newly created CarModel
DatabaseRepository -> Sends success message to AdvertController
AdvertController -> sends success message to user.

Answer 1

The great thing about Laravel is the flexiability to do this how YOU want. There is often no "single correct" way to do things - but lots of ways.

Taylor talks about this alot in his book ( From Apprentice to Artisan ), where basically you should determine what option is best for YOU.

Personally, I would go with one repository, which handles all the logic, and interacts with different models on the backend. This is a good seperation of concerns.

It means your controllers only need to know about the single repository, while the repository handles all the backend interactions.