Preventing Laravel adding multiple records to a pivot table

Solution 1:

You can also use the $model->sync(array $ids, $detaching = true) method and disable detaching (the second param).

$cart->items()->sync([$item->id], false);

Update: Since Laravel 5.3 or 5.2.44, you can also call syncWithoutDetaching:

$cart->items()->syncWithoutDetaching([$item->id]);

Which does exactly the same, but more readable :)

Solution 2:

You can check the presence of an existing record by writing a very simple condition like this one :

if (! $cart->items->contains($newItem->id)) {
    $cart->items()->save($newItem);
}

Or/and you can add unicity condition in your database, it would throw an exception during an attempt of saving a doublet.

You should also take a look at the more straightforward answer from Barryvdh.

Solution 3:

@alexandre Butynsky method works very well but use two sql queries.

One to check if cart contains the item and one to save.

To use only one query use this:

try {
    $cart->items()->save($newItem);
}
catch(\Exception $e) {}

Solution 4:

As good as all this answers are because I had tried them all, one thing is still left unanswer or not taken care of: the issue of updating a previously checked value (unchecked the checked box[es]). I do have something similar to the above question expect i want to check and uncheck features of products in my product-feature table (the pivot table). I am a newbie and I have realised none of the above did that. The are both good when adding new features but not when i want to remove existing features (i.e. uncheck it)

I will appreciate any enlightenment in to this.

$features = $request->get('features');

if (isset($features) && Count($features)>0){
    foreach ($features as $feature_id){
        $feature = Feature::whereId($feature_id)->first();
        $product->updateFeatures($feature);
    }
}

//product.php (extract)
public function updateFeatures($feature) {
        return $this->features()->sync($feature, false);
}

or

public function updateFeatures($feature) {
   if (! $this->features->contains($features))
        return $this->features()->attach($feature);
}
//where my attach() is:
public function addFeatures($feature) {
        return $this->features()->attach($feature);
}

Sorry guys, not sure is I should delete the question because having figure out the answer myself, it sounds a bit stupid, well the answer to the above is as simple as working @Barryvdh sync() as follows; having read more and more about:

$features = $request->get('features');
if (isset($features) && Count($features)>0){
    $product->features()->sync($features);
}