Laravel 5.4 ignores $fillable

Question

I'm trying to update an orders table which has a freign key constraint which is linked by customer_id to the customers table.

Migration file (works 100%):

Schema::create('orders', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->integer('order_id')->unsigned()->index();
            $table->integer('customer_id')->unsigned()->index();
            $table->foreign('customer_id')->references('customer_id')->on('customers')->onDelete('cascade');
            $table->string('order_status');
            $table->string('customer_note')->nullable();
            $table->timestamp('order_date');
            $table->timestamps();
            $table->softDeletes();
            $table->primary(['order_id', 'customer_id']);
        }); 

In my model I have made the following columns fillable so that Laravel doesn't ignore them:

protected $fillable = [
        'order_id', 'customer_id', 'order_status', 'customer_note', 'order_date',
    ];

When I create/update an order I use the following lines of code in the OrderController under the update method. I use firstOrCreate() to ensure that this doesn't fail if somehow the order was deleted or never added in the first place.

$order = Order::firstOrCreate(['order_id' => $request->input('id')]);
        $order->order_id = $request->input('id');
        $order->customer_id = $request->input('customer_id');
        $order->order_status = $request->input('status');
        $order->customer_note = $request->input('customer_note');
        $order->order_date = $request->input('date_created');
        $order->save();

When I try to update the order I get the following error message in the log file:

Next Illuminate\Database\QueryException: SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1452 Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (`vcc-backoffice`.`orders`, CONSTRAINT `orders_customer_id_foreign` FOREIGN KEY (`customer_id`) REFERENCES `customers` (`customer_id`) ON DELETE CASCADE) (SQL: insert into `orders` (`order_id`, `updated_at`, `created_at`) values (76, 2017-09-08 08:55:37, 2017-09-08 08:55:37)) in /home/vagrant/Projects/vcc-backoffice/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:647 

I noticed that the insert statement only tries to insert 3 columns. order_id , updated_at , created_at

I'm assuming that the row cannot be created because the foreign *customer_id** colun isn't being filled but I cannot figure out why Laravel is ignoring them.

1. I thought perhaps, the input was not in the right format but even hard-coding the customer_id as 1 didn't work. (customer_id 1 exists in customers table).

2. I've also checked and confirm that $request->input('customer_id') contains the correct integer, which is 1 in this case and does exist as a record in the customers table.

I suspect that Laravel is ignoring the relevant columns but I cannot make out why.

My model file looks as follows:

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Order extends Model
{
    use Notifiable;
    use SoftDeletes;

    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $fillable = [
        'order_id', 'customer_id', 'order_status', 'customer_note', 'order_date',
    ];

    /**
     * Whether the primary key auto-increments.
     *
     * @var bool
     */
    public $incrementing = false;

    /**
     * Set the primary key.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $primaryKey = ['order_id', 'customer_id'];

    protected $with = ['products']; 

    /**
     * The products that belong to the Order.
     */
    public function products()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('App\Product','order_product','order_id','product_id')
            ->withPivot('qty')
            ->withTimeStamps();
    }

    /**
     * The customer that belongs to the Order.
     */
    public function customer()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo('App\Customer');
    }
}

Answer 1

firstOrCreate will create a new database entry if it can't fetch a row based on the attributes you give, but creating a new row without customer_id is not allowed as you've added a foreign key on the column and it can't be null .

Either add null to your column,

$table->integer('customer_id')->unsigned()->index()->nullable();

or change firstOrCreate to this:

$order = Order::where('order_id', $request->input('id'))->first() ?: new Order;