Saving Models

Saving models in the Laravel-Elasticsearch integration follows the conventional Laravel Eloquent patterns, making it easy for developers to transition or work with Elasticsearch alongside relational databases

Save a new model

Option A: Attribute Assigning

You can create a new model instance, set its attributes individually, and then save it to the Elasticsearch index. This approach is straightforward and mirrors the typical Laravel ORM usage.

$log = new UserLog;
$log->user_id = $userId;
$log->title = $title;
$log->status = 1;
$log->save();

Option B: Mass Assignment via create()

The create() method allows for mass assignment of model attributes using an associative array. This is a concise and efficient way to create and save a new model instance in one step.

$log = UserLog::create([
    'user_id' => $userId,
    'title' => $title,
    'status' => 1,
]);

Updating a model

Updating models in Elasticsearch is consistent with Eloquent’s approach, where you fetch a model, change the attributes, and then call save().

$log = UserLog::where('status', 1)->first();
$log->status = 2;
$log->save();

For mass updates, you can use the update() method on a query builder instance, which allows updating multiple documents matching the query criteria in one operation.

$updates = Product::where('status', 1)->update(['status' => 4]);
// $updates will hold the number of documents updated

Fast Saves

Elasticsearch operates with a near real-time index, which means there’s a slight delay between indexing a document and when it becomes searchable. By default, this package saves a document and waits for the index to refresh, ensuring the document is immediately available and up to date. However, this can introduce latency in write-heavy applications.

To optimize performance, you can use saveWithoutRefresh() or createWithoutRefresh(), which skips the wait for index refresh. This is beneficial when immediate document retrieval is not necessary.

$log->saveWithoutRefresh();

and

UserLog::createWithoutRefresh($attributes);

Caution: Using saveWithoutRefresh and updating the model immediately after can lead to unexpected outcomes, such as duplicate documents.

// This pattern should be avoided:
$log = new UserLog;
$log->user_id = $userId;
$log->title = $title;
$log->status = 1;
$log->saveWithoutRefresh();
$log->company_id = 'ABC-123';
$log->saveWithoutRefresh(); // May result in two separate documents

First Or Create

The firstOrCreate() method retrieves the first model matching the given attributes or creates a new model if no match is found. It takes two arguments:

$attributes: An associative array of attributes to search for or create with.
$values: An associative array of values to set on the model if it is created.

Use with caution

This method will take the $attributes array and make a “best guess” as to how to build a query from that. String values will be treated as exact matches (Required to be a keyword) and everything else a normal where clause.
Don’t overload the $attributes array with too many values, use it for searching unique values, then fill the $values array with the rest of the values.

$book = Book::firstOrCreate(
    ['title' => $title,'author' => $author], //$attributes
    ['description' => $description, 'stock' => 0] //values
 );

First Or Create Without Refresh

Added to the family of saving without refresh methods, firstOrCreateWithoutRefresh() is a new method that’s identical to the firstOrCreate() method but without waiting for the index to refresh.

$book = Book::firstOrCreateWithoutRefresh(
    ['title' => $title,'author' => $author], //$attributes
    ['description' => $description, 'stock' => 0] //values
 );