Laravel eloquent version change from 5.4 to 5.8

To upgrade Laravel Eloquent from version 5.4 to 5.8, you need to follow these steps:

Update Laravel: Before upgrading Eloquent, make sure your Laravel project is up-to-date with the latest version. You can check the latest Laravel version on the official Laravel website and update your project using Composer.

composer require laravel/laravel ^7.0

Update your .env file: Laravel 5.8 requires PHP 7.2.3 or higher. Make sure you have the required PHP version installed on your server and update your .env file accordingly.

APP_VERSION=7.0
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhost

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=mydatabase
DB_USERNAME=myusername
DB_PASSWORD=mypassword

BROADCAST_DRIVER=redis
CACHE_DRIVER=file
SESSION_DRIVER=file
QUEUE_DRIVER=sync

Update your composer.json file: Laravel 5.8 requires PHP 7.2 and comes with Eloquent 5.8 by default. However, you need to update your composer.json file to ensure that your project uses the latest version of Eloquent.

{
    "require": {
        "laravel/framework": "7.0.*"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "files": [
            "vendor/autoload.php"
        ]
    }
}

Update your config/app.php file: Laravel 5.8 comes with a new service provider, App\Providers\AppServiceProvider. You need to update your config/app.php file to register this provider.

'providers' => [
    // ...
    App\Providers\AppServiceProvider::class,
],

Update your Eloquent code: Eloquent 5.8 comes with some new features and changes. Here are some of the notable changes:

The hasMany and belongsToMany methods now accept a second argument, which is an array of relationships. This allows you to define multiple relationships with the same model.

public function users()
{
    return $this->hasMany([User::class, Post::class]);
}

The with method now accepts an array of relationships to eager load.

$posts = Post::with(['user', 'comments'])->get();

The findOrCreate method now accepts an array of columns and their corresponding values.

$user = User::findOrCreate([
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'email' => '[email protected]'
], [
    'password' => Hash::make('password')
]);

The whereHas method now accepts a closure as its second argument, which allows you to define complex queries on related models.

$users = User::whereHas('posts', function ($query) {
    $query->where('title', 'like', '%laravel%');
})->get();

That's it! You have successfully upgraded Laravel Eloquent from version 5.4 to 5.8.