codebright

Eloquent ORM 266
1 mysql> use myapp;
2 Database changed
3 mysql> select * from games;
4 +----+-----------------+------------------------+
5 | id | name | description |
6 +----+-----------------+------------------------+
7 | 1 | Assassins Creed | Assassins VS templars. |
8 +----+-----------------+------------------------+
9 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
We can see that our new row has been inserted correctly. Great! We have inserted a new record
without writing a single line of SQL. Now that’s my kind of victory.
You will notice that we didn’t have to specify an id value for our object. The id column is
automatically incremented, so the database layer will handle the numbering of our rows for us.
It’s generally a bad idea to modify the id column of an Eloquent model. Try to avoid it unless you
really know what you’re doing.
We used the $timestamps attribute to disable automatic timestamps. Instead, let’s take a look at
what happens when we enable them. First we need to alter our database schema. It’s a bad idea
to manually modify our database schema, or two update existing migrations. This is because our
database state might become ‘out-of-sync’ with our teammates. Instead, let’s create a new migration
that our teammates could also execute to receive our changes.
1 $ php artisan migrate:make add_timestamps_to_games
2 Created Migration: 2013_07_14_165416_add_timestamps_to_games
Our migration has been created. You will notice that we gave the migration a discriptive name to
represent our intentions with the migration. This could be useful information should your teammates
later execute the migration. Let’s use the schema builder to add timestamps to our game table.
1