How do you efficiently perform bulk inserts and updates (Upsert) in Eloquent with one query?

Short answer

Use upsert() with an array of rows, a list of columns that identify uniqueness, and the columns to update when a conflict occurs.

Explanation

Instead of calling updateOrCreate for every row in a loop, generating hundreds of queries, upsert translates into one advanced SQL query (INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE in MySQL or ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE in PostgreSQL), enabling very fast bulk operations.

Code example

User::upsert([
    ['email' => '[email protected]', 'name' => 'Ali', 'points' => 10],
    ['email' => '[email protected]', 'name' => 'Sara', 'points' => 20],
], ['email'], ['name', 'points']);

Common mistakes

• Calling updateOrCreate in a loop for millions of rows, greatly slowing the application and overloading the database.

Follow-up questions

• What are Eloquent model events, and how do Observers organize business logic?

Sources

• Laravel docs — Upserts