Using Laravel push method to update your model and its relationships

Today's tip is about a method that I've seen a few people talking about. It's a model method called push.

"But what does this method do, Matheusão?"

Let's imagine the following scenario:

$user = User::with('address')->first();

$user->name = 'Matheusão';
$user->address->country = 'Brazil';

$user->save();
$user->address()->save();

Awesome! We've retrieved the user with his address and updated his name and country.

However, we can use the pushmethod that will save everything for us:

$user = User::with('address')->first();

$user->name = 'Matheusão';
$user->address->country = 'Brazil';

$user->push();

This simple command will save our model data and iterate over its relations and save all the new data for us.

And another great thing: If we update a relationship inside another relationship, it will be saved too!

Let's take a look at the push method definition:

public function push()
{
    if (! $this->save()) {
        return false;
    }

    foreach ($this->relations as $models) {
        $models = $models instanceof Collection
            ? $models->all() : [$models];

        foreach (array_filter($models) as $model) {
            if (! $model->push()) {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }

    return true;
}

As we can see, every time that script iterates over a relation, it calls the push method again, allowing us to save a lot of relations recursively.

But don't forget to put this kind of operation inside a transaction to avoid data loss.

$user = User::with('address')->first();

$user->name = 'Matheusão';
$user->address->country = 'Brazil';

\DB::transaction(fn () => $user->push());

That's all, folks, keep coding! 😗 🧀