One to Many relation - how to implement push - laravel

Question

I am trying to do an insert which will create a parent record for one table and then insert records that link back to the parent record into another.
In other words this: User completes Course information form, then completes a series of questions on the same page. On submission, the course information is inserted into its own table then questions are inserted into a separate one.
My Course model is this:
class CourseVerification extends Eloquent
{
public function courseverificationqanda()
{
return $this->hasMany('CourseVerificationQandA', 'id', 'verification_id');
}
My Question model is this:
class CourseVerificationQandA extends InnovedBaseModel
{
public function courseverification()
{
return $this->belongsTo('CourseVerification');
}
On form submission, my controller is doing this:
// create course verification record first
$veri = new CourseVerification;
$veri->verification_date = $input['verification_date'];
// create collection to store questions
$collection = new Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection();
// loop through submitted questions and push them to the collection
for($i = 0; $i < count(Input::get('question_id')); $i++) {
$answer = new CourseVerificationQandA;
$answer->question_id = $input['question_id'][$i];
$answer->answer = $input['answer'][$i];
$answer->additional_notes = $input['additional_notes'][$i];
$collection->push($answer);
}
// add collection to quesetion relation
$veri->courseverificationqanda = $collection;
// insert both course record and questions
$veri->push();
The push method then errors and debugs the SQL command
insert into `CourseVerification`
(`verification_date`, `topic_id`, `course_id`, `verifier_id`,`iv_status`,
`verification_type`, `courseverificationqanda`, `created_by`)
values
(29/10/2014, 1294, 47, 1, 1, I, [{"question_id":"2","answer":"0","additional_notes":""},
{"question_id":"3","answer":"0","additional_notes":""},
{"question_id":"4","answer":"0","additional_notes":""}], 1)
As you can see, the assignment of the collection to $veri->courseverificationqanda is then getting treated as a table column in the SQL query when it is actually a relationship to the question table.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

You have a few mistakes there.
You don't assign collection to the relation. You need to load that relation (as a collection in this case) and push on it, then just save everything:
$veri = new CourseVerification;
$veri->verification_date = $input['verification_date'];
// Save the parent model before you can add its children
if ($veri->save())
{
// loop through submitted questions and push them to the collection
for($i = 0; $i < count(Input::get('question_id')); $i++) {
$answer = new CourseVerificationQandA;
// associate with the parent model
// explicitly
$answer->verification_id = $veri->getKey();
// or the eloquent way
// $answer->courseverification()->associate($veri);
$answer->question_id = $input['question_id'][$i];
$answer->answer = $input['answer'][$i];
$answer->additional_notes = $input['additional_notes'][$i];
$veri->courseverificationqanda->push($answer);
}
}
// save both course record and questions
$veri->push();
Another thing are your relations, which are both wrong:
// this is how it should look like
// CourseVerification
public function courseverificationqanda()
{
return $this->hasMany('CourseVerificationQandA', 'verification_id', 'id');
}
// QandA
public function courseverification()
{
return $this->belongsTo('CourseVerification', 'verification_id');
}
In firsts case you swapped the keys, so it would work but not the way it should.
In second case you didn't specify the foreign key at all, so Eloquent would look for courseverification_id in the table (method_name_id).