Automatically Update Parent Timestamps with Laravel #[Touches]

Automatically Update Parent Timestamps with Laravel #[Touches]

Imagine you have a blog post with many comments.

When a comment is updated, you may also want the post's updated_at timestamp to change.

Normally, you might manually update the post:

$comment->save();
$comment->post->touch();

Laravel provides a cleaner way to handle this automatically.

Use the #[Touches] Attribute

On the child model, add the #[Touches] attribute:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Attributes\Touches;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\BelongsTo;

#[Touches(['post'])]
class Comment extends Model
{
    public function post(): BelongsTo{
        return $this->belongsTo(Post::class);
    }
}

Now, when the comment is updated using Eloquent's save() method, Laravel will also update the updated_at timestamp of its related post.

Real-World Example

Suppose you update a comment:

$comment->content = 'Updated comment';
$comment->save();

Laravel updates:

comments.updated_at

and automatically touches:

posts.updated_at

You don't need to call touch() manually.