Updating one-to-many relationships with updateOrCreate methods

Question

My main model Tag has a one-to-many relationship with Product where one Tag can have many Products assigned to them via tag_id relationship on the DB.

On my edit view, I am allowing users to edit the tag products . These products can be added/edited/deleted on the form request.

Each product field on the form is picked up from a request() array. Eg: request('title'),request('price') .

I have set $title[$key] as the request('title') array for example.

My thoughts next, was to loop through each of the products for this tag and updateOrCreate based on the request data. The issue here, is that there's no way of detecting if that particular product was indeed needing updated.

TagController - Update Product Model (One-to-Many)

foreach($tag->products as $key => $product){

  Product::updateOrCreate([
   'id'  => $product->id,
   ],
     [
       'title' => $title[$key],
       'price' => $price[$key],
       'detail' => $detail[$key],
       'order' => $order[$key],
       'tagX' => $tagX[$key],
       'tagY' => $tagY[$key],
       'thumb' => $img[$key],
   ]);
}

For the initial tag update, I have set an if statement which works great (albeit messy) for the main tag img .

TagController - Update Tag Model

//Update the tag collection
if($request->hasFile('img')) {
  $tag->update([
    'name' => $name,
    'hashtag' => $hashtag,
    'img' => $imgPub,
  ]);
} else{
  $tag->update([
    'name' => $name,
    'hashtag' => $hashtag,
  ]);
}

Is there a better way to determine if the product fields were updated on the request?

Ideally I would like the user to be able to add/remove or edit products from the tag edit request, but not delete existing product images if they have not been updated. Thanks!

Answer 1

As per my view, you are on the wrong track. Tagging relationship should be Many To Many.

You must check about sync() method of Laravel in ManyToMany relationship. Please check this: https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/eloquent-relationships#many-to-many

Notes: Please add codes as per your business logic.

Product.php

  public function products(){
    return $this->belongsToMany( 'App\Product', 'product_tags', 'tag_id', 'product_id');
  }

Tag.php

   public function tags(){
     return $this->belongsToMany( 'App\Tag', 'product_tags', 'product_id', 'tag_id');
  }

ProductController.php

  public function update(Product $products,  Request $request){
    //update the product
    $products->update($request->all());

    //attach new tags to the product 
    $products->tags()->sync($request->input('tag_list'));

    return redirect('articles');
 }

Answer 2

Normally I do something similar on the frontend side

<div class="product">
   <!-- For Products that may be edited -->
   <input type="hidden" name="id" value={{$product->id??0}}>
   <input type="hidden" name="action" value="update">
   <input type="text" name="title" value={{$product->title}}>
      ...
</div>
<div class="product">
   <!-- For New Products -->
   <input type="hidden" name="id" value=0>
   <input type="hidden" name="action" value="add">
   <input type="text" name="title" value="New Title">
      ...
</div>
<div class="product">
   <!-- For Deleted Products -->
   <input type="hidden" name="id" value={{$product->id}}>
   <input type="hidden" name="action" value="delete">
   <input type="text" name="title" value="New Title">
      ...
</div>

Create the json (array of product objects) payload using javascript and send ajax request to the backend

[{'id':101,'title':'product 1','action':'update'},
{'id':102,'title':'product 2','action':'update'},
... , 
{'id':201,'action':'delete'}, 
{'id':202, 'action':'delete'},
... ,
{'id':0,'title':'new product 1','action':'add'}, 
{'id':0,'title':'new product 2','action':'add'}]

Now on the backend side, loop through the list of products and check for action. Depending on the action, take necessary step.