Insert error on update - php

Question

I have a good amount of experience with MVC but can't seem to figure what is going wrong here.
I'm trying to update the user's model but for some reason what should be an update is attempting to execute as an insert.
Edit: I'm using this starter site for Laravel which uses Ardent
$user = User::find(Auth::user()->id);
$user->recipient_id = "xxxxxxxxx";
if ($user->save()) {
return true;
} else {
print_r($user->errors()->all()); die();
}
The above outputs
Array (
[0] => The username has already been taken.
[1] => The email has already been taken.
[2] => The password confirmation does not match.
)
Any help would be really appreciated! I have a feeling its something trivial...

Answer 1

Actually while validating it uses rules of the User Model class.
This happens because use of these lines in models.
public $autoHydrateEntityFromInput = true; // hydrates on new entries' validation
public $forceEntityHydrationFromInput = true; // hydrates whenever validation is called
What you have to do is to change the rules dynamically.
$user = User::find(Auth::user()->id);
$user->recipient_id = "xxxxxxxxx";
$user::$rules['username'] = 'required|regex:/^[a-zA-Z\- ]+$/|unique:users,username,'.$user_id;
$user::$rules['email'] = 'required|email|unique:users,email,'.$user_id;
$user::$rules['password'] = 'required';
//this will ignore current username and email
if ($user->save()) {
return true;
} else {
print_r($user->errors()->all()); die();
}