Laravel 8 Eloquent firstOrCreate() Example

In this post, I will explain what is the usage of Laravel Eloquent firstOrCreate() and its importance. Laravel provides firstOrCreate() to help us to attempt to find a record in our database if not found then create a new record and return it.

 

Example without Laravel firstOrCreate()

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Models\Post;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

class PostsController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     *
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     */
    public function index()
    {
        $title = 'Post 3';
        $post = Post::where('title', $title)->first();
  
        if (is_null($post)) {
            $post = new Post(['title' => $title]);
        }
  
        $post->description = 'Description for post 3.';
        $post->body = 'Body for post 3.';
  
        $post->save();
  
        print_r($post); die;
    }
}

 

Example with Laravel firstOrCreate()

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Models\Post;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

class PostsController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     *
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     */
    public function index()
    {
        $post = Post::firstOrCreate(
            ['title' => 'Post 5'],
            ['description' => 'Description for post 5.', 'body' => 'Body for post 5.']
        );
  
        print_r($post); die;
    }
}

 

As you can see of the above codes have the same functionality but using the firstOrCreate() method in Laravel will shorten our code.

 

I hope you find this helpful. Thanks for reading :)