FirstOrCreate, and Other 2-in-1 Methods

Laravel Eloquent has quite a few "two-in-one" features: do something or do something else. And I will demonstrate a few of them now.

Example 1: firstOrCreate()

What if you want to get the first record by some condition and create that record if it doesn't exist?

So, this is a typical code. You do where() and then first(). If it doesn't return anything, then you create the record.

use App\Models\User;
 
class HomeController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $user = User::where('email', '[email protected]')->first();
        if (! $user) {
            User::create([
                'name' => 'Admin',
                'email' => '[email protected]',
                'password' => bcrypt('password'),
            ]);
        }
 
        return $user->id;
    }
}

Laravel allows you to do that in one sentence without the if-statement, with firstOrCreate().

use App\Models\User;
 
class HomeController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $user = User::firstOrCreate(
            ['email' => '[email protected]'],
            ['name' => 'Admin', 'password' => bcrypt('password')]
        );
 
        return $user->id;
    }
}

There are two parameters here. So first, by which condition should you specify more fields. The second parameter is other fields for creating a record.

Example 2: firstOrNew()

Similar to the first example, but here the record...