Creating timestamps throws an error for model with dynamic table name set in constructor

Question

I have an Eloquent model with constructor (below), that takes $type param. The types are - let's say - first, second or third.

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class MyModel extends Model {

    protected $table; // Define $table field

    public function __construct($type = null, array $attributes = array()) {

        // Initialize $table field
        $this->table = isset($type) ? 'my_'.$type.'_table' : null;

        parent::__construct($attributes);
    }

?>

As you can see in the code above, I set the model's $table property to my_[type]_table, so I can use the model dynamically with one of 3 tables available. Like this:

// Somewhere in controller
$type = 'first';
$myModel = new MyModel($type);
$myModel->create(.....); // <= Error is thrown here

The problem is when Eloquent tries to create timestamps for the table, it doesn't care anymore about the table name I set in __construct() and it tries to create the timestamps for table called my_models (which is obviously based on the model's class name), instead of doing it for (in this case) my_first_table:

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1 no such table: my_models (SQL: insert into "my_models" ("updated_at", "created_at") values (2015-07-17 08:35:13, 2015-07-17 08:35:13))

Any way to keep the dynamic table name for the automatic timestamps creation? Im on Laravel 5.1.

What are you doing so that Eloquent generates such an insert? Could you paste a piece of code that results in this error being generated? — jedrzej.kurylo
It's the $myModel->create(.....); part. Basically it tries to create the entry but breaks when it comes to timestamps. — lesssugar
Are the types dynamic or more than 20? If no I would create a common base class for these models with their common implementation and only change $table in the descendant classes. This documents better what models are available by looking at the classes and also provides a cleaner solution if you need to one day implement things differently per table. — Peter Krebs

jedrzej.kurylo jedrzej.kurylo · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-17T09:16:25

When you call $myModel->create(), a new object is created and type is not passed to its constructor.

Just pass $type to $myModel->create() as one of the attributes, update the constructor:

public function __construct($attributes = array()) {
  if (array_key_exists('type', $attributes)) {
    $this->table = 'my_' . $attributes['type'] . '_model';
  }

  parent::__construct(array_except($attributes, 'type'));
}

and it should work.

Creating timestamps throws an error for model with dynamic table name set in constructor

2 Answers