Route Model Binding In Laravel & Change Default Column id To Another Column

Hooray! I am up with another article. In this article you will learn What is Route Model Binding in Laravel and how to change the default column from id to another column like unique_id

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Prerequisites

Fresh installation of Laravel or working Laravel project.

Note: Here I am taking an example of Blog. But the concept remains same.

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What The Heck Is Route Model Binding?

We usually use routes similar to this /posts/{id} where we are passing id which corresponds to posts->id, this is usually called as injecting a model id to route/controller method. Which later you will use to query your database like the following

/** web.php */
Route::get('/posts/{id}', 'PostsController@show');

/** PostsController.php */
public function show($id){
    /** Fetch the post details by $id passed */
    $post = Post::where(['id' => $id])->first();
    
    if(!$post){
        abort(404, 'Post Not Found');
    }
    
    return view('posts.show', [
        'post' => $post
    ]);
}

What if the querying part is handled by Laravel. Wouldn't that be easier on your life. Yes, this is what we call Route Model Binding. Laravel automatically injects the model instances in your routes.

In the following example instead of post id, we are injecting entire post model instance which matches it.

Laravel handles the id with route model binding and given us the result . Now the code is very clean and consise.

To explain in simple words Laravel with fetch the record from database by comparing id column

/** web.php */
/** Dont worry on the {post} naming, usually you may take {id} too :) */
Route::get('/posts/{post}', 'PostsController@show');

/** PostsController */

/** Your show() methos will look like the following */
public function show(Post $post){
    /** If $post value passed is not found then laravel will call abort() automatically */
    return view('posts.show', [
        'post' => $post
    ]);
}

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Change Route Model Binding Column id -> unique_id

By default route model binding binds to your primary key column ie id but what if you need to change the column to other column.

Laravel has given an option to override column id with other column in your models. For example in my Post model I can change the id with unique_id in the following way

/** Other Code */
class Post extends Model{
  /** Other Code */

  public function getRouteKeyName(){
    return 'unique_id';
  }

  /** Other Code */
}

You can override within the function getRouteKeyName(). Here I wanted unique_id to be queried all the time for route model binding for Post model.

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Conclusion

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