Laravel 5.2 - Use a String as a Custom Primary Key for Eloquent Table Becomes 0

Laravel 5.2 - Use a String as a Custom Primary Key for Eloquent Table becomes 0

This was added to the upgrade documentation on Dec 29, 2015, so if you upgraded before then you probably missed it.

When fetching any attribute from the model it checks if that column should be cast as an integer, string, etc.

By default, for auto-incrementing tables, the ID is assumed to be an integer in this method:

https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/5.2/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php#L2790

So the solution is:

class UserVerification extends Model
{
    // if your key name is not 'id'
    // you can also set this to null if you don't have a primary key
    protected $primaryKey = 'your_key_name';

    public $incrementing = false;

    // In Laravel 6.0+ make sure to also set $keyType
    protected $keyType = 'string';
}

Eloquent model returns 0 as primary key

You can try setting public $incrementing = false; on your model so eloquent doesn't expect your primary key to be an autoincrement primary key.

Laravel 5.2 Eloquent primary key as a multiple key

Eloquent assumes that there is an id column in your table that identifies a row. In your case this column is named blog_id so you need to let Eloquent know.

You can do that by defining primaryKey attribute in your model. It doesn't need to be the primary key in the database as long as it can be used to fetch a single record:

class BlogCounter extends Model {
  protected $primaryKey = 'blog_id';
}

Random string primary key for table in Laravel

I would use an integer primary key and add a separate column for the string key (with an unique index). Integer keys are faster and easier to handle (on joins etc.).

If the string key has a fixed length, you should use a CHAR column to get the best performance.

I would put the key generation into the controller:

$key = str_random(6);
while(YourModel::where('key', $key)->exists()) {
    $key = str_random(6);
}
$yourModel->key = $key;

Or you just try a key and catch the unlikely case of a duplicate value:

$yourModel->key = str_random(6);
try {
    $yourModel->save();
catch(Illuminate\Database\QueryException $e) {
    <code from above>
    $yourModel->save();  
}

Obtaining field from table using primary key

You can access the model that given revision relates to by accessing the revisionable relation of that revision. In your case, in order to display the email property of related model, you could do the following:

<td>{{ $revision->revisionable->email }}</td>

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