Laravel- Creating new user only if there is data in another table - php

Question

I have two tables the first one is the user table which have these property id, username, email,remember_token, createdat, updateat another table is called received_pay having id, email, token my task is to check if the email, and token entered by the user must match the ones in received_pay otherwise new user is not created, thanks for your time in advanced,
I'm trying to create new user on a condition that if there is data in another table then new user is created otherwise not I have put my code inside if else statement and is throwing errors.
my function for creating new user is listed below:
protected function create(array $data)
{
/*$exists = \DB::table('received_pay')->where('email', $data['email'])->first(); */
$exists=\DB::table('received_pay')->where('email', '=', $data['email'])->where('token', $data['token'])->exists();
if ($exists === null)
{
// user doesn't exist
return User::create([
'username' => $data['username'],
'email' => $data['email'],
'password' => bcrypt($data['password']),
'token' => $data['token'],
]);
}
else
{
return null;
}
}

Answer 1

I think that the best approach in Laravel is create a middleware to protect this url. If you already have this create user feature working is better don't modify it.
So the first step would be create a middleware (https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/middleware) to add your safeguard, something like this:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Middleware;
use Closure;
class CheckPayment
{
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
$payment = \DB::table('received_pay')->where('email', $request->email)->where('token', $request->token]);
if (!$payment->count()) {
return redirect('no-payment');
}
return $next($request);
}
}
Then you would need to create a route to handle this invalid creation users (this no-payment url).
And finally you can protect your create-user url in route, by adding your middleware in your kernel.php file...
protected $routeMiddleware = [
...
'payment' => \App\Http\Middleware\CheckPayment::class,
];
and in your web.php route file:
Route::post('user', 'UserController#create')->middleware('payment');
In this way your code will look cleaner, tidier, and closer to the way Laravel works.
I hope it would work fine for you.

Answer 2

If you wish to do it with if statement then do it like below
protected function create(array $data)
{
/*$exists = \DB::table('received_pay')->where('email', $data['email'])->first(); */
$exists=\DB::table('received_pay')->where('email', '=', $data['email'])->where('token', $data['token']);
if (!$exists->count())
{
// user doesn't exist
return User::create([
'username' => $data['username'],
'email' => $data['email'],
'password' => bcrypt($data['password']),
'token' => $data['token'],
]);
}
else
{
return null;
}
}
the count() in the if is to make the statement evaluate true if the data exists and false otherwise and create the new user.
I think that solves your problem.