Add Site Settings to the blog and good lesson learned

I wanted to add a setting page for this blog so that I can dynamically change the Site Title and Site Description, instead of hard-coding it in the blade file.

This guy already covered a part of the process: https://medium.com/@tasneem.90.wahdan/laravel-settings-made-simple-how-to-save-and-handle-them-efficiently-dd082e192b01, then I build the SettingController by myself.

What is the issue?

Everything was straightforward until the step the update the data to the database. I was using this code to update the database table based on the validated attributes:

public function update(Request $request)
    {
        $validatedAttrs = request()->validate(
            [
                'site_title' => 'required|min:5',
                'site_description' => 'required'
            ]
            );

            foreach ($validatedAttrs as $key => $value) {
                Setting::updateOrCreate(
                    ['key' => $key], 
                    ['value' => $value]
                );
            }

        return redirect()->route('admin.setting.edit')->with('success', 'Site setting updated successfully!');
}

Looks good, right?

NO!!! IT'S NOT!

Somehow the settings table is not updated at all. I consulted with ChatGPT, then Claude, then Grok and all suggested the same way: using updateOrCreate

Setting::updateOrCreate(
                    ['key' => $key], 
                    ['value' => $value]
                );

It was not working AT ALL!

I keep digging in desperate and finally figure out a way to update the database, using the direct method instead of using Eloquent ORM

DB::table('settings')->where('key', $key)->update(['value' => $value]);

Why?

The settings table was setup using this

Schema::create('settings', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->string('key')->unique();
    $table->text('value');
    $table->timestamps();
});

It does not have id column, so it seems Eloquent ORM get some difficulty when running updateOrCreate() method.

Meanwhile, DB::table('settings') interacts directly with the database, so there is not issue.

Solution

For now, the easiest way for me is the update the migration file, adding column id

Schema::create('settings', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('key')->unique();
            $table->text('value');
            $table->timestamps();
        });

Drop the settings table, and re-create again using php artisan migrate

This is a good lesson for a beginner!