Laravel Mass Update

Update multiple Laravel Model records, each with its own set of values, sending a single query to your database!

Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require iksaku/laravel-mass-update

Usage

In your model class, add the Iksaku\Laravel\MassUpdate\MassUpdatable trait:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Iksaku\Laravel\MassUpdate\MassUpdatable;

class User extends Model
{
    use MassUpdatable;
    
    // ...
}

And that's all! Your model is now ready to update multiple records with varying values in a single query!

Let's take a look at some possible use cases for this new query:

Simple use case: Update the values of multiple records

Imagine that you have the following users table:

id	name	username
1	Jorge Gonzales	iksaku
2	Gladys Martines	gm_mtz

But, we want to update both records since those users have told us that their legal last name was misspelled:

• González is written with an accent on the letter a, and only uses z, never an s.
• Martínez is written with an accent on the letter i, and last letter should be a z, not an s

Well, we can mass update those specific records:

User::massUpdate(
    values: [
        ['id' => 1, 'name' => 'Jorge González'],
        ['id' => 2, 'name' => 'Gladys Martínez'],
    ]
);

Now, both records will be updated with their corresponding values in a single query, resulting in:

id	name	username
1	Jorge González	iksaku
2	Gladys Martínez	gm_mtz

By default, the massUpdate query will grab your model's primary key name and apply it as part of the query to not affect other records.

If you want to use another column as an index to separate value types, you could pass it as a second argument to the function call:

User::massUpdate(
    values: [
        ['username' => 'iksaku', 'name' => 'Jorge González'],
        ['username' => 'gm_mtz', 'name' => 'Gladys Martínez'],
    ],
    uniqueBy: 'username'
);

Simple use case #2: Updating multiple Eloquent Models

If you need to update the values in some Model classes and want to automatically mass update those changes, then this is for you!

The existing masUpdate query is capable of identifying the dirty attributes of Eloquent model classes and compile them properly. You don't need to manually convert the models into an array, you just pass the list of models you want to update, and it takes care of the rest.

Tip: If you pass a full list of Eloquent models, only those with dirty values will be updated, so you don't actually need to filter the unchanged ones manually.

Let's recreate the previous example, but using Eloquent models...

// Say we already pulled our user models previously... Something like this:
$jorge = User::where('name', 'Jorge Gonzales')->first();
$gladys = User::where('name', 'Gladys Martines')->first();

// And let's say we already made changes to those models... Like this:
$jorge->name = 'Jorge González';
$gladys->name = 'Gladys Martínez';

// And now, let's update both models in a single query:
User::massUpdate(
    values: [$jorge, $gladys]
);

Pretty cool, right?

Note: It is only possible to mass update instances of the same Eloquent model, it is not possible to mix the Query Builder with different Eloquent model classes.

Complicated use case: Using multiple indexes to differentiate records

Let's say that we just created expenses table to track how much we spend across time, and we manually filled the following values:

id	year	quarter	total_expenses
..	..	..	..
..	2019	Q3	216.70
..	2019	Q4	216.70
..	2020	Q1	416.70
..	2020	Q2	211.12
..	2020	Q3	113.17
..	2020	Q4	422.89
..	2021	Q1	431.35

Above information is not real, I don't track my expenses quarterly.

Oops... We made a little mistake... Expenses from Q1 of 2020 and 2021 are switched, and in order to fix it we could only pass the quarter column as an index, but if we only pass down the quarter column as an index, we'll modify ALL Q1 records. So, for this, we should also pass down the year column as an index:

Expense::massUpdate(
    values: [
        ['year' => 2020, 'quarter' => 'Q1', 'total_expenses' => 431.35],
        ['year' => 2021, 'quarter' => 'Q1', 'total_expenses' => 416.70],
    ],
    uniqueBy: ['year', 'quarter']
);

Tip: If you ever need to specify more than one or two indexes, just include all of them in the values and uniqueBy parameters.

The result in the table will be properly updated:

id	year	quarter	total_expenses
..	..	..	..
..	2020	Q1	431.35
..	..	..	..
..	2021	Q1	416.70

NOTE: It is important that you always include the uniqueBy columns in your values array, exceptions will be thrown otherwise.

NOTE #2: It is not possible to update the values of the uniqueBy columns. Every column specified in this parameter will be filtered from the ones that are going to be updated.

This prevents unexpected side effects from happening while updating values in array shape and passed as Eloquent models.

Advanced use case: Chaining with other query statements

Let's try to keep things simple and imagine a system that tracks To-Do items for multiple users:

id	user_id	content	order
1	1	Pick up my daughter	2
2	1	Buy a new ThinkPad	1
3	1	Drink water	3

Like every To-Do system, we let our users order their To-Do items to see the most important ones at the top of the list, and to do this, we may be using a simple sorting package that allows the user to drag items up and down the list.

Once the user moves one item in the list, in the backend we may receive an array with a specific key-value shape: ['position' => 'id']. With this, we're going to update the records' position based on the given id.

We can simply call our massUpdate query function and everything will be done... Well, sort of...

In this specific scenario, we're dealing with multiple lists for multiple users, that means that we may not be always able to control which id columns are sent to the server, maybe some malicious actor wants to hijack our To-Do list and lower the priority for buying ThinkPads. This is a pretty serious security concern.

There are many ways to solve this kind of issues, and a simple one is to chain query statements to our massUpdate function.

In this case, we're going to add a where() statement to only update those items that belong to the currently logged in user. And it's as simple as in any other Laravel query builder:

TodoItem::query()
    ->where('user_id', auth()->id())
    ->massUpdate(
        values: collect($request->input('item_order'))
            ->mapWithKeys(
                fn ($id, int $position) => ['id' => $id, 'order' => $position]
            )
    );

Tip: Did you know you can pass Collections, LazyCollections, Eloquent Collections and basically any Arrayable instance as values to the massUpdate query function?

This can be used as an extra layer to ensure data integrity when dealing with User-provided input that affects multiple records in the database.

Testing

composer test

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security Vulnerabilities

If you discover any security related issues, please email [email protected] instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

• Jorge González
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.