Clone an Eloquent object including all relationships?

andrewtweber picture andrewtweber · May 27, 2014 · Viewed 90.7k times · Source

Is there any way to easily clone an Eloquent object, including all of its relationships?

For example, if I had these tables:

users ( id, name, email )
roles ( id, name )
user_roles ( user_id, role_id )

In addition to creating a new row in the users table, with all columns being the same except id, it should also create a new row in the user_roles table, assigning the same role to the new user.

Something like this:

$user = User::find(1);
$new_user = $user->clone();

Where the User model has

class User extends Eloquent {
    public function roles() {
        return $this->hasMany('Role', 'user_roles');
    }
}

Answer

Sabrina Leggett picture Sabrina Leggett · Jun 23, 2015

tested in laravel 4.2 for belongsToMany relationships

if you're in the model:

    //copy attributes
    $new = $this->replicate();

    //save model before you recreate relations (so it has an id)
    $new->push();

    //reset relations on EXISTING MODEL (this way you can control which ones will be loaded
    $this->relations = [];

    //load relations on EXISTING MODEL
    $this->load('relation1','relation2');

    //re-sync everything
    foreach ($this->relations as $relationName => $values){
        $new->{$relationName}()->sync($values);
    }