firstOrNew with "or" statement

January 5, 2022

I have a table with columns like "name", "surname", "user_id", and I need to check if entry exists first by id, and then by name and surname together, if there is none, create it. How do I do it neatly, instead of making two update statements, and if both return 0 just create a new one (which seems too bulky)

I thought of using firstOrNew, but it seems that it only can work while matching all of the parameters.
Is there any method I’ve missed that would apply well to my situation?

>Solution :

You could try something like this (assuming you want to create a model [saved to the database]):

$attributes = [
    'name' => ...,
    'surname' => ...,
];

$model = Model::where('id', $id)
    ->orWhere(fn ($q) => $q->where($attributes))
    ->firstOr(fn () => Model::create($attributes));

This would search for a record by id OR name and surname. If it doesn’t find one it will create a new record with the name and surname (assuming those attributes are fillable on the Model).

Laravel 8.x Docs – Eloquent – Retrieving Single Models / Aggregates firstOr