How to call variables in controller Laravel - php

Question

I'm trying to use Auth::user()->id; and post them with another model under 'user_id' so I don't have to manually give users a 'user_id'.
I've checked and included the required files and I'm getting the users "id" from Users Table
$user_id = Auth::user()->id;
echo $user_id; //this is returning right user "id"
I'm having trouble calling variables and posting it to DB in controller functions any help would be fine.
public function store(Request $request)
{
$user_id = Auth::user()->id;
$this->validate($request, [
'token1' => 'required',
'token2' => 'required'
]);
$tokens = new Tokens([
'user_id' => $user_id,
'token1' => $request->get('token1'),
'token2' => $request->get('token2')
]);
$tokens->save();
return view('/home');
}
Post the User "id" from User table into Tokens table's "user_id" so I can work with models
Getting this error:
SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 19 NOT NULL
constraint failed: tokens.user_id (SQL: insert into "tokens"
("token1", "token2", "updated_at", "created_at") values (asddsadf,
sdfasdf, 2019-09-24 11:53:57, 2019-09-24 11:53:57))
My migration is:
$table->bigIncrements('id');
$table->integer('user_id');
$table->string('token1');
$table->string('token2');
$table->timestamps();

Answer 1

You should avoid filling the user_id in this way.
The error is thrown because user_id is not a fillable property. But the correct way to handle this is with the relationships.
So I suppose that Tokens has a belongsTo relation because of its user_id foreign key (that anyway should be an unsignedInteger column) and in your model you have something like:
public function user() {
return $this->belongsTo(User::class)
}
If you have a look at the offical documentation you will see that you should change your code in this way:
public function store(Request $request)
{
$this->validate($request, [
'token1' => 'required',
'token2' => 'required'
]);
$tokens = new Tokens([
// 'user_id' => $user_id, This is useless
'token1' => $request->get('token1'),
'token2' => $request->get('token2')
]);
// With this method you're going to set the user_id column
$token->user()->associate(auth()->user());
$tokens->save();
return view('/home');
}