Creating default object from empty value PHP Laravel - php

Question

When I want to update the endpoint, I got the error:
ErrorException: Creating default object from empty value in file /var/www/html/app/Http/Controllers/CasesController.php on line 208
below the code:
public function accept(Request $request)
{
$id_case = $request->id_case;
$case = Cases::find($id_case);
$maxAgent = 0;
switch ($id_case[0]) {
case 'A':
$maxAgent = 1;
break;
case 'B':
$maxAgent = 3;
break;
case 'C':
$maxAgent = 5;
break;
default:
break;
}
// check the agent receive the case
$accepted_agent = AgentInCase::where('id_case', $id_case)->where('id_agent', auth()->user()->id_user)->get();
if ($accepted_agent) {
$message = 'Agent has accepted the request';
return $this->sendResponse($accepted_agent, $message, 200);
}
// check the max agent in case
$agent_in_case = AgentInCase::where('id_case', $id_case)->get();
if (count($agent_in_case) < $maxAgent) {
$agent = Agent::find(auth()->user()->id_user);
$agent->is_in_case = true;
$agent->save();
$agent = AgentInCase::create([
'id_case' => $id_case,
'id_agent' => auth()->user()->id_user
]);
//send FCM to customer that request confirmed
$message = [
'title' => 'accept_agent',
'body' => 'New Agent Come To Help ',
'payment' => 'Rp 15.000'
];
$this->sendNotificationFirebase('customer', $case->id_customer, $message, $agent);
$message = 'Successfully accepted request';
return $this->sendResponse($case, $message, 200);
}
$message = 'Failed to accept request';
$errors = 'Case has been handled by another agent';
return $this->sendError($message, 400, $errors);
}
The error in line:
$agent->is_in_case = true;
I'm trying to solve this error and I just get one reference:
Creating default object from empty value in PHP?.
But, I can't yet to solving this.
Could you help me to solve this? What I must do?

Answer 1

For every request that you want to select by an ID, you should catch and error if requested id is not exists .
In my opinion clean way to do that in laravel is using validation .
For example if you want to find a user by its ID validation should be something like :
'ID' => 'exists:users,ID',
First Id is in your request and second one is your column name in database.