laravel-eloquent-uuid | simple drop-in solution for providing UUID support | Identity Management library

Auto-incrementing integers cannot be used for primary keys in distributed database topologies in which the potential for conflicts (collisions) exists.

The extant body of literature regarding the subject of UUIDs vs. auto-incrementing integers is vast, and the fundamental precepts are widely understood. Yet, at the same time, no single, comprehensive explanation of how to achieve this in Laravel, with support for Eloquent Models and relationships, seems to exist.

The following article is worthwhile and explains the performance overhead incurred for storing primary keys in VARCHAR(36)/CHAR(36) vs the 4/8-byte integer normally used for auto-incrementing keys. We should heed this advice (especially the post-publication corrections that the author notes throughout):

https://tomharrisonjr.com/uuid-or-guid-as-primary-keys-be-careful-7b2aa3dcb439

Equally valuable is the commentary that stems from the discussion, which is extensive:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14523523

The following article explains how to implement primary keys using UUIDs in Laravel Eloquent models, but it falls short of explaining how to implement the same for Eloquent relationships, e.g., Many-to-Many with "pivot tables" (per Laravel parlance).

https://medium.com/@steveazz/setting-up-uuids-in-laravel-5-552412db2088

Others have asked similar questions, such as Laravel eloquent UUID in a pivot table , but in that instance, the asker is generating the UUID to be inserted in the pivot table using a MySQL trigger, which I would prefer to avoid in favor of a purely-Eloquent approach.

Another similar question is asked at How To Cast Eloquent Pivot Parameters? , but the crux of the question is how to cast pivot attributes, not how to generate custom values for the ID column upon attaching or synching relationships.

To be clear, we can achieve this easily by passing the optional array argument to the attach() method: