Laravel – Override model ID

Question

262.77K viewsSeptember 10, 2022laravel php uuid

2

Moritz Friedrich September 6, 2022 0 Comments

I’m working on an ebook management system. Instead of an auto-incrementing integer primary key, I’m using UUIDs, which works fine:

protected static function boot()
{
    parent::boot();

    static::creating(function ($model) {
        $model->{$model->getKeyName()} = Uuid::generate()->string;
    });
}

I also disabled PK incrementing on the model:

public $incrementing = false;

Now the EPUB standard suggests publishers to assign every book a UUID, if possible, so I thought it would be neat to use an existing UUID if the file provides it, otherwise generate a new one for the library.
So I added id to the $fillable array of my model and set the ID conditionally in my create controller method:

if (array_key_exists('uuid', $epubMetaData)) {
    $book->id = $epubMetaData['uuid'];
}

Then I populate the rest of my fields and $book->save() the book. It ends up with a newly generated UUID, even if there is one in the $epubMetaData array… So I suspect Laravel decides to ignore my ID. Is there anything I’ve missed?

2 Answers

score 1 · Answer 1 · 2022-09-07T07:15:42+00:00

To disable auto incrementing (and therefore the management of your id column by Laravel), you can add a public $incrementing property to your model and set it to false:

public $incrementing = false;

You can also set a protected $primaryKey property in your model to override the default id column’s name:

protected $primaryKey = 'uuid';

Of course if your column is named “id”, you don’t have to do that.

score 4 · Answer 2 · 2022-09-07T01:37:12+00:00

Well, you aren’t checking if the id is already set in your creating callback:

static::creating(function ($model) {
    if (!$model->id) {
       $model->id = Uuid::generate()->string;
    }
});