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Inside this article we will see the concept i.e Laravel 9 Create Record if Not Exists Example Tutorial. Article contains the classified information about How to create record if not exists in Laravel.

If you are looking for a solution i.e How to check if a record exists with Laravel Eloquent then this article will help you a lot for this. Tutorial is super easy to understand and implement it in your code as well.

Let’s get started.

Laravel Installation

Open terminal and run this command to create a laravel project.

composer create-project laravel/laravel myblog

It will create a project folder with name myblog inside your local system.

To start the development server of laravel –

php artisan serve

URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000

Assuming laravel already installed inside your system.

Create Database & Connect

To create a database, either we can create via Manual tool of PhpMyadmin or by means of a mysql command.

CREATE DATABASE laravel_app;

To connect database with application, Open .env file from application root. Search for DB_ and update your details.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel_app
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=root

Create Migration

Open project into terminal and run this command to create a migration file.

$ php artisan make:migration create_posts_table

Above command will create 2022_09_29_212520_create_posts_table.php file inside /database/migrations folder.

Open xxx_create_posts_table.php file and write this code into it.

<?php

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

return new class extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('title', 120);
            $table->string('slug', 120);
            $table->text('body');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

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

Run Migration

Back to terminal and run this command for migrations.

$ php artisan migrate

It will create posts table into your database.

Create Model

Back to terminal and run this command to create model.

$ php artisan make:model Post

It will create a model file Post.php inside /app/Models folder.

Open Post.php and write this following code into it.

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    use HasFactory;

    protected $fillable = [
        'title', 'slug', 'body'
    ];
}

Create Controller

Back to project terminal and run this command to create a controller file.

$ php artisan make:controller PostController

Above command will create a file i.e PostController.php inside /app/Http/Controllers folder.

Example #1

Open PostController.php and write this following code into it.

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\Post;

class PostController extends Controller
{
    public function index(Request $request)
    {
        Post::firstOrCreate(

            ['slug' => $request->slug],

            ['title' => $request->title, 'body' => $request->body]
        );
    }
}

firstOrCreate method is used to create a record if it does not already exist in the table in laravel. It has two parameters, conditions and fields and these parameters should be an array.

It tries to find a model matching the attributes you pass in the first parameter. If a model is not found, it automatically creates and saves a new record after applying attributes passed in the second parameters including first parameter field and values.

This code snippet will create a new post record including title, body and slug fields in the post table if the record is not already exist with this particular slug.

Example #2

Open PostController.php and write this following code into it.

<?php
   
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
  
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\Post;
  
class PostController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $slug = 'platinum';
        $post = Post::where('slug', $slug)->first();
  
        if (is_null($post)) {

            $post = new Post();

            $post->title = 'Platinum';
            $post->slug = 'platinum';
	        $post->body = 'Test platinum';
	  
	        $post->save();
	  
	        dd($post);
        }
    }
}

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