catching exceptions thrown by SQL INSERTs in CRUD Controllers

[prescriptionlifeline]

I have a CRUD for a User model with SoftDeletes as a trait. email is a unique() column and when I'm trying to add a new user with an email of a soft deleted user I get a Illuminate\Database\UniqueConstraintViolationException with the following message:

SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1062 Duplicate entry '[email protected]' for key 'users.users_email_unique'

This totally makes sense but I'd like to be able to catch when this exception is being thrown and do an update() on the table when this happens but idk where I'd catch this exception.

Any ideas?

For that matter I think it'd also be better if, for non soft deleted users, it just gave a more useful error, saying something like "A user with this email already exists" but idk where I'd do that in my CRUD controller either.

[pxpm]

You should prevent that from happening by having validation in your Controller.

In you create/update operations you should create something like a FormRequest with your rules for the fields. Most likely laravel unique validation would prevent this from happening and you can define your own messages: https://laravel.com/docs/11.x/validation#form-request-validation

See for example in our demo: https://github.com/Laravel-Backpack/demo/blob/main/app/Http/Requests/DummyRequest.php
https://github.com/Laravel-Backpack/demo/blob/ea5765fa4b3ef651f7fb6fb2ffbbc94e7d0f6987/app/Http/Controllers/Admin/DummyCrudController.php#L63

If you need to so something custom when that validation error trigger you should probably write your custom rule, that will behave similar to Laravel unique, but instead of reporting the error, it could do something else (handling the error on your own) and reporting back "all fine here, continue ..." 👍

Cheers

[prescriptionlifeline]

I created a new class that extends FormRequest, as in that example, and added this as a rule:

'email' => ['required', 'string', 'lowercase', 'email', 'max:255', 'unique:users'],

The only problem is that now, when I try to make edits on an existing user (I'm using the same FormRequest for both create and update operations), I get this error:

The email has already been taken.

If I'm adding a new user that makes sense but giving this error on existing emails that are already unique to them isn't helpful.

In the ProfileUpdateRequest.php that Laravel Breeze creates there's this:

'email' => ['required', 'string', 'lowercase', 'email', 'max:255', Rule::unique(User::class)->ignore($this->user()->id)],

I tried that but got an error when I tried to access /admin/user/{id}/edit:

Attempt to read property "id" on null

Any ideas?

[pxpm]

Yes, you are on the right track.

You can still use the same form request, but I would advise you to separate them into two, so it's easy to assert about which does what.

Instead of $this->user() use backpack_user()->id.

Cheers

[prescriptionlifeline]

Now I'm getting this error:

SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'mywebsite.App\Http\Requests\User' doesn't exist

SELECT count(*) AS aggregate FROM `App\Http\Requests\USER` WHERE `email` = user

It's weird that USER is in all caps but, regardless, I did some digging and, in config/backpack/base.php, found this:

'user_model_fqn' => config('auth.providers.users.model'),

I mean idk if that has anything to do with the error but it' my best current guess. And I imagine that corresponds to config\auth.php which does this:

<?php

return [
...
    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | User Providers
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | All authentication drivers have a user provider. This defines how the
    | users are actually retrieved out of your database or other storage
    | mechanisms used by this application to persist your user's data.
    |
    | If you have multiple user tables or models you may configure multiple
    | sources which represent each model / table. These sources may then
    | be assigned to any extra authentication guards you have defined.
    |
    | Supported: "database", "eloquent"
    |
    */

    'providers' => [
        'users' => [
            'driver' => 'eloquent',
            'model' => App\Models\User::class,
        ],
...

So from my vantage point everything looks good.

Any ideas?

[pxpm]

No, that has nothing to do with your error.

And I am pretty sure it's something in your code. I never saw that syntax for "unique" rule, AFAIK in Laravel docs https://laravel.com/docs/11.x/validation#rule-unique, It should be something like: Rule::unique('users')->ignore(backpack_user()->id)

Cheers

[prescriptionlifeline]

backpack_user()->id doesn't work - it returns the id of the currently logged in user - not of the user being edited.

[jcastroa87]

Im glad you solve the problem. I will close the issue, but please feel free to re-open or create a new one if needed.

Cheers.