To Fail or not to Fail

In addition to findOrFail(), there's also Eloquent method firstOrFail() which will return 404 page if no records for query are found.

$user = User::where('email', '[email protected]')->firstOrFail();

There's also a method firstOr() to customize how exactly you want to "fail", with a custom callback.

$user = User::where('email', '[email protected]')->firstOr(function () {
    $document = Document::create(...);
 
    return User::create([
        'document_id' => $document->id,
        'email' => '[email protected]',
    ]);
});