laravel how to handle profile pages? - php

Question

I am playing around with Laravel 5. I am trying to build a site where a user can add some information about himself and it shows up in the frontend.
I am struggling to understand how to save the profile information only once.
Everytime the user call /profile/create a new DB entry is created. But I only need one profile entry per user!
If I don't provide a /profile/create route how can a user save his profile info to the DB? As the user can't call profile/edit because no entry exists.
This is my Controller:
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use App\User;
use App\Profile;
use App\Http\Requests\ProfileRequest;
use App\Http\Requests;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Auth;
class ProfilesController extends Controller
{
/**
* Display a listing of the resource.
*
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function index()
{
return view('backend.profile.index');
}
/**
* Show the form for creating a new resource.
*
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function create()
{
return view('backend.profile.create');
}
/**
* Store a newly created resource in storage.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function store(ProfileRequest $request)
{
$profile = new Profile($request->all());
Auth::user()->profiles()->save($profile);
return 'saved';
}
/**
* Display the specified resource.
*
* #param int $id
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function show($id)
{
//
}
/**
* Show the form for editing the specified resource.
*
* #param int $id
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function edit($id)
{
//
}
/**
* Update the specified resource in storage.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #param int $id
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function update(Request $request, $id)
{
//
}
/**
* Remove the specified resource from storage.
*
* #param int $id
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function destroy($id)
{
//
}
}
My Profile Model:
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Profile extends Model
{
protected $fillable = [
'name',
];
public function user() {
$this->belongsTo('App\User');
}
}
My User Model:
/**
* A User can have one Preference
* #return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\HasOne
*/
public function profiles() {
return $this->hasOne('App\Profile');
}

Answer 1

There are numerous ways, one is simply throw an exception if the user already has a profile:
public function store(ProfileRequest $request)
{
$user = Auth::user();
if($user->profiles){
abort(500);
}
$profile = new Profile($request->all());
$user()->profiles()->save($profile);
return 'saved';
}
In your template, you can show a link to either create profile or edit profile depending if the user has one yet.
You could do this check in middleware if you prefer, or make a guard.
Another nice method, as mentioned by #Maraboc in comments, is to create a blank profile on signup, so you only need an edit route.
Worth mentioning, if the user only has one profile, you should name the property 'profile' not 'profiles'

Answer 2

You may create empty profiles when creating new users. Another way is checkout if profile exists in your edit/update actions, like this:
public function edit()
{
//if profile will be edited at first time, then dummy profile will be used
$profile = Auth::user()->profile ?: new Profile();
return view('backend.profile.edit', compact('profile'));
}
public function update(Request $request)
{
//validate your data
//use $fillable in Profile model to whitelist acceptable attributes
if(Auth::user()->profile) {
Auth::user()->profile->update($request->all());
} else {
$profile = new Profile($request->all());
Auth::user()->profile()->save($profile);
}
//redirect to another page
}