Laravel: Can't save user object to database - php

Question

I'm following this Laravel login/register tutorial on YouTube and I ran into a problem.
It seems I cannot insert the data from the $user object into my database.
Everything I have so far works perfectly fine until I reach the $user->save() method.
The following is my AccountController.php. You'll notice that I'm using print_r to try and debug the process. The first print_r gets printed to my page, but the second never does: Laravel just stops and outputs a cryptic Whoops, looks like something went wrong. warning.
class AccountController extends BaseController {
public function getCreate()
{
return View::make('account.create');
}
public function postCreate()
{
$validator = Validator::make(Input::all(), array(
'email' => 'required|max:64|min:3|email|unique:users',
'name' => 'required|max:64|min:3',
'password' => 'required|max:64|min:6'
));
if ($validator->fails())
{
// Return to form page with proper error messages
return Redirect::route('account-create')
->withErrors($validator)
->withInput();
}
else
{
// Create an acount
$email = Input::get('email');
$name = Input::get('name');
$password = Input::get('password');
// Activation code
$code = str_random(64);
$user = User::create(array(
'active' => 0,
'email' => $email,
'username' => $name,
'password' => Hash::make($password),
'code' => $code
));
if ($user)
{
// Send the activation link
Mail::send('emails.auth.activate', array(
'link' => URL::route('account-activate', $code),
'name' => $name
), function($message) use($user) {
$message
->to($user->email, $user->username)
->subject('Jasl | Activate your new account');
});
return Redirect::route('home')
->with('success', 'One more step! You\'ll get an email from us soon. Please follow the activation link to activate your account.');
}
}
}
public function getActivate($code)
{
// Find user whose code corresponds to the one we've previously sent through email
$user = User::where('code', '=', $code)->where('active', '=', 0);
if ($user->count())
{
$user = $user->first();
$user->active = 1;
$user->code = '';
echo '<pre>', print_r($user), '<pre>';
if ($user->save())
{
echo '-----------------------';
echo '<pre>', print_r($user), '<pre>';
}
}
}
}
I've googled a bit and found out that I should create a $fillable array in my User class, so I did it:
use Illuminate\Auth\UserTrait;
use Illuminate\Auth\UserInterface;
use Illuminate\Auth\Reminders\RemindableTrait;
use Illuminate\Auth\Reminders\RemindableInterface;
class User extends Eloquent implements UserInterface, RemindableInterface {
protected $fillable = array('active', 'name', 'email', 'password', 'password_temp', 'code', 'salt', 'created_at', 'updated_at', 'pref_weight', 'pref_units', 'pref_time', 'pref_ener');
use UserTrait,
RemindableTrait;
/**
* The database table used by the model.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $table = 'users';
/**
* The attributes excluded from the model's JSON form.
*
* #var array
*/
protected $hidden = array('password', 'remember_token');
}
Those are actually all the elements that my users table has.
This did not solve the problem.
What am I missing? Why isn't $user->save() working properly?

Answer 1

I got it.
My problem was that I created the id column of my users table with a custom name, user_id, instead of simply id. Apparently Laravel does not like this at all. The debugger pointed me to:
C:\xampp\htdocs\laravel\vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Connection.php
with the error:
SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'id' in 'where clause' (SQL: update users set active = 1, code = , updated_at = 2015-01-20 21:28:14 where id is null)
I didn't know you shouldn't customize id columns. Renaming it solved the problem entirely and the database now updates correctly.
Thanks #patricus for the useful debugging tip, that's what allowed me to track this error down.