Laravel Eloquent saving an object with children - php

Question

I am trying to save an order with order_items but I am not really finding anything in the docs to support this use case. A hasMany relationship.
Basically there is an orders table with something like id | user_id and an order_items table with id | order_id | product_id.
How can I save() the order and use an array of items at the same time without having to loop over the items and save them individually?
Is this possible?
Pseudo code assuming $items is an array:
$items = Session::get("cart.items");
$order = new Order;
$order->user_id = Auth::user()->id;
$order->order_items = $items;
$order->save();

Answer 1

What you need for a hasMany relation is either saveMany or createMany, depending on what's in your $items array:
// array of attributes:
$items = [
['name'=>'item1','price'=>'price1'],
...
];
// then createMany:
$order->orderItems()->createMany($items);
This will create new rows in Items table.
// array of models:
$items = [
Item::find($someId),
Item::find($anotherId),
// and/or newly instantiated:
new Item(['name'=>'item1','price'=>'price1']),
...
];
// then createMany:
$order->orderItems()->saveMany($items);
This will associate (save) existing models, and create non-existing ones.
Also notice that I use camelCase relation name orderItems instead of your order_items.
This is an important detail, since Eloquent (Laravel v4) looks for camelCased methods on the model when working with relations (dynamic properties).
//Order model
public function orderItems()
{
return $this->hasMany(...);
}
$order->orderItems; // collection
$order->order_items; // collection as well
// --------------------
// BUT
public function order_items()
{
return $this->hasMany(...);
}
$order->orderItems; // null
$order->order_items; // null
// the only way you can work with relation then, is explicitly use method like:
$order->order_items()->get();

Answer 2

Probably not the best solution you are looking for, but this should work.
Let's say that the array is named $items, I'm under the impression that you will be saving it into a pivot table. In my example below I also have a 3rd field on item_order pivot table named item_quantity.
foreach ($items as $item)
{
$order->items()
->attach($item['item_id'], ['item_quantity' => $item['item_quantity']]);
}
Basically you will be looping through the $items array. This will assume that you have defined the relationship on your Order model called items().
Then use the attach() method
->attach([insert the item_id], array('3rd field name' => 'value to be inserted')
Finally, if you don't have a 3rd field on your pivot table you could just do
->attach($item_id)
You can check the example given at the Laravel docs
Note
attach() is the method used when the you are only creating a record on the Database, otherwise you need a different method when you want to update.

Answer 3

#jareks answer helped in a similar scenario except for a mass assignment exception . so on digging up docs i found that you need to set a guarded or fillable property for mass assignment in latest versions of laravel (4.2) .
please refer this along with his answer .
Fillable or guarded properties
When creating a new model, you pass an array of attributes to the model constructor. These attributes are then assigned to the model via mass-assignment. This is convenient; however, can be a serious security concern when blindly passing user input into a model. If user input is blindly passed into a model, the user is free to modify any and all of the model's attributes. For this reason, all Eloquent models protect against mass-assignment by default.
So set the fillable or guarded properties on your model. Docs and Source
class User extends Eloquent {
protected $fillable = array('first_name', 'last_name', 'email');
}