[5.1] Hydrating a model assumes it exists already?

[cabloo]

I stumbled upon this issue while writing a Seeder. The code should be fairly self-explanatory. When I run this, nothing shows up in the database.

list($hdds, $other) = PartType::hydrate([
    ['name' => 'Hard Drives'],
    ['name' => 'Other'],
])->each(function($item) {
    $item->save();
});

$hdd_parts = Part::hydrate([
    [
        'name' => 'HDD 1',
        'billing_id' => 'HDD-1',
    ], [
        'name' => 'HDD 2',
        'billing_id' => 'HDD-2',
    ],
]);

$hdds->parts()->saveMany($hdd_parts->all());

After some digging through the Model source code, I found that the hydrate function ends up creating a new Model instance and sets the exists property to true. Then, when calling the save function, nothing is added to the database because it is assumed to exist there already.

As a temporary fix for my use case, I added this to my base Model. With this code added, everything shows up in the database as expected.

    public static function hydrate(array $items, $connection = null)
    {
        return parent::hydrate($items, $connection)->each(function($item) {
            $item->exists = false;
        });
    }

However, I think the correct solution would be to create each new Model instance without assuming it exists already.

[lukasgeiter]

That's intentional and totally how hydrate should work. It's specifically to hydrate the data from the db into a model.

[cabloo]

Ah, I understood it as turning raw arrays into models so that they could be stored in the database.

So I should just create a second function like hydrate that does this specifically for seeding, using the logic from my overridden hydrate function?

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 2:39 AM lukasgeiter notifications@github.com wrote:

That's intentional and totally how hydrate should work. It's specifically to hydrate the data from the db into a model.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/laravel/framework/issues/9360#issuecomment-114021187.

[franzliedke]

These sections of the docs should help you:

• http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/eloquent#inserting-and-updating-models
• http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/eloquent-relationships#inserting-related-models

I think this ticket can be closed. :)

[cabloo]

Yes, thanks for your help. It's unfortunate that there's no fillMany or similar in Eloquent, I ended up renaming the hydrate function I wrote above to fillMany for this use case.