I'm working on a Laravel project, and I have the following migrations:
public function up(): void
{
Schema::create('customers', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id('customer_id');
$table->string('first_name', 50);
$table->string('last_name', 50);
$table->string('address', 100)->nullable();
$table->string('phone', 15)->nullable();
$table->string('email', 50)->unique();
$table->timestamp('registration_date')->default(DB::raw('CURRENT_TIMESTAMP'));
$table->timestamps();
});
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*/
public function down(): void
{
Schema::dropIfExists('customers');
}
public function up(): void
{
Schema::create('vehicles', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id('vehicle_id');
$table->foreignId('customer_id')->constrained('customers')->onDelete('cascade');
$table->string('make', 50);
$table->string('model', 50);
$table->year('year');
$table->string('license_plate', 15)->unique();
$table->string('vin', 17)->unique();
$table->string('color', 20)->nullable();
$table->timestamp('registration_date')->default(DB::raw('CURRENT_TIMESTAMP'));
$table->timestamps();
});
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*/
public function down(): void
{
Schema::dropIfExists('vehicles');
}
As you can see in the vehicles table, there is a foreign key referencing the customers table. I'll show you the relationship in the models:
class Vehicle extends Model
{
use HasFactory;
/**
* The primary key associated with the table.
*
* @var string
*/
protected $primaryKey = 'vehicle_id';
/**
* The attributes that are mass assignable.
*
* @var array<int, string>
*/
protected $fillable = [
'customer_id',
'make',
'model',
'year',
'license_plate',
'vin',
'color',
'registration_date',
];
public function customer(): BelongsTo
{
return $this->belongsTo(Customer::class, 'customer_id');
}
}
class Customer extends Model
{
use HasFactory;
/**
* The primary key associated with the table.
*
* @var string
*/
protected $primaryKey = 'customer_id';
/**
* The attributes that are mass assignable.
*
* @var array<int, string>
*/
protected $fillable = [
'first_name',
'last_name',
'address',
'phone',
'email',
'registration_date',
];
public function vehicles(): HasMany
{
return $this->hasMany(Vehicle::class, 'customer_id');
}
}
And finally, the factories:
class CustomerFactory extends Factory
{
protected $model = Customer::class;
/**
* Define the model's default state.
*
* @return array<string, mixed>
*/
public function definition(): array
{
return [
'first_name' => fake()->name(),
'last_name' => fake()->lastName(),
'address' => fake()->address(),
'phone' => fake()->phoneNumber(),
'email' => fake()->email(),
'registration_date' => fake()->date(),
];
}
}
class VehicleFactory extends Factory
{
protected $model = Vehicle::class;
/**
* Define the model's default state.
*
* @return array<string, mixed>
*/
public function definition(): array
{
return [
'customer_id' => Customer::factory(),
'make' => fake()->company,
'model' => fake()->word,
'year' => fake()->year,
'license_plate' => strtoupper(fake()->unique()->bothify('???-####')),
'vin' => strtoupper(fake()->unique()->bothify('?????????????????')),
'color' => fake()->safeColorName,
'registration_date' => fake()->date(),
];
}
}
Apparently, the following error is occurring:
SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1 foreign key mismatch - "vehicles" referencing "customers" (Connection: sqlite, SQL: insert into "vehicles" ("customer_id", "make", "model", "year", "license_plate", "vin", "color", "registration_date", "updated_at", "created_at") values (11, Wilderman Group, nostrum, 1970, VRF-4423, FVKRDKQWQHGDVFWBP, purple, 2019-01-16, 2024-11-13 18:30:33, 2024-11-13 18:30:33))
This error is due to the attempt to add a foreign key in the vehicles table for a customer with ID 11, which clearly does not exist because only 10 customers are created for 15 vehicles. I tried "forcing" the error to go away by looping through all the created vehicles and assigning them to existing customers, but that led to another error. I think there’s likely something wrong here that would be much simpler to fix than trying to solve it in a way the framework wasn't designed for. If anyone knows what might be wrong, I’d appreciate the help.
P.S. I’m using Laravel 11
Finally, after several days and countless tests, I discovered that the issue was related to the project itself. As stated in the Laravel factories documentation, the line 'customer_id' => Customer::factory() should never create a customer if the intent is to select an already existing one. Despite changing the logic to 'customer_id' => fake()->randomElement(Customer::all('id')) as @williamrb suggested, the same issue persisted. However, instead of occurring on record 11, it now happened randomly on 6, 12, 4, etc. Somehow, and I eventually gave up trying to figure out why, the framework did not behave as expected.
Perhaps it was due to having created and deleted multiple migrations, seeders, factories, and models incorrectly within the same project, causing it to break. After all, none of us fully understand what Laravel does behind the scenes with migrations, factories, seeders, etc. In the end, I managed to make it work by modifying the migration for the vehicles table's foreign key from:
$table->foreignId('customer_id')->constrained('customers')->onDelete('cascade');
to:
$table->unsignedBigInteger('customer_id');
$table->foreign('customer_id')->references('customer_id')->on('customers')->onDelete('cascade');
This resolved the issue. However, days later, I noticed that using the relationships still did not work as expected. As a result, I decided to create a completely new project from scratch, using exactly the same code I posted in my question, and it worked. The issue was indeed with the project itself.
I hope someone can explain why this might have happened so I can identify these types of problems more quickly in the future.