Laravel ORM Part1

03 March 2014

Laravel is a MVC PHP framework so it ships with its own ORM component called “Eloquent”. Eloquent will take care of records retrieval for us. We don’t have to write any SQL line. Let’s explore eloquent basic CRUD methods.

Creating Models

Before we create our model, we need to create table to interact with. Open your terminal and create migration file.

$ php artisan migrate:make creat_tickets

Created Migration: 2014_03_03_184213_creat_tickets
Generating optimized class loader

Now let’s fill migration file app/database/migrations/2014_03_03_184213_creat_tickets.php. I will work with the following structure.

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreatTickets extends Migration {

	/**
	 * Run the migrations.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function up()
	{
     //add tickets table schema
     Schema::create('tickets',function($table){
      $table->increments('id');
      $table->string('title',150);
      $table->text('subject');
      $table->timestamps();
     });
	}

	/**
	 * Reverse the migrations.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function down()
	{
      //drop table
      Schema::drop('tickets');
	}

}

Let’s run migrate command to and create tickets table.

$php artisan migrate

Migrated: 2014_03_03_184213_creat_tickets

Well, we can get started. Create new file in app/models/ and call it Ticket.php.

//app/models/Ticket.php
class Ticket extends Eloquent
{
  //done!
}

That’s all, Eloquent will do the rest. Now let’s explort CRUD methods.

Creating Records

To insert new record, Create instance of Ticket class then set columns values then execute save() method. Here’s an example attached to new route.

Route::get('new', function(){
 	//insert ticket
 	$ticket = new Ticket;
 	$ticket->title = 'new issue';
 	$ticket->subject = 'issue details here';
 	$ticket->save();
 	//insert another ticket
 	$ticket = new Ticket;
 	$ticket->title = 'another issue';
 	$ticket->subject = 'issue details here';
 	$ticket->save();
});

Let’s visit http://localhost/<laravel dir>/public/new and then check tickets table records.

Retrieving Records

We will use find() method to retrieve instance of a record .It accepts one parameter (id). Here’s an example.

Route::get('get', function(){
 	//get ticket with id = 1
 	$ticket = Ticket::find('1');
 	echo $ticket->title . '<br/>';
 	echo $ticket->subject . '<br/>';
 	echo $ticket->created_at . '<br/>';
 	echo $ticket->updated_at . '<br/>';
});

Updating Records

Similar to retrieving except that we set values to properties and then call save() method. Take a look at the following example.

Route::get('update', function(){
 	//get ticket with id = 1
 	$ticket = Ticket::find('1');
 	//change its data
 	$ticket->title = 'new title';
 	$ticket->subject = 'new subject';
 	//update ticket data
 	$ticket->save();
});

Deleting Records

We could use find method to retrieve record and then call delete() method to delete record.

Route::get('delete', function(){
 //get ticket with id = 1
 $ticket = Ticket::find('1');
 //delete it
 $ticket->delete();
});

Also we can delete records using destroy() method.It accepts single id or array of ids.

Route::get('delete', function(){
 	//delete ticket with id = 2
 	Ticket::destroy('2');
 	//delete some tickets
 	Ticket::destroy(array('2','4','5'));
});

It is worth noting that if you don’t like to create created_at and updated_at columns.You must set timestamps property to false in table model class. Model will look like this.

//app/models/Ticket.php
class Ticket extends Eloquent
{
  //if created_at and updated_at columns
  //not exist
  public $timestamps = false;
}