How to update and delete records in a table based on a new request?

General
1

I need to update records for Guide Steps (Every recipe has steps/instruction and my table was created for storing this data)

I was able to create those records in the db with quite easy syntax:

GuideStep::insert($groupedSteps); // $groupedSteps is an array

But now I need to update those records (and remove unnecessary ones), for this moment I came up with logic that can only update records or create if there is no such records:

foreach ($groupedSteps as $step){
  GuideStep::updateOrInsert(
    ['recipe_id' => $recipeId, 'step_number' => $step['step_number']],
    ['step_text' => $step['step_text'], 'step_image' => $step['step_image']]
  );
}

migration:

Schema::create('guide_steps', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->foreignId('recipe_id')->constrained()->cascadeOnDelete();
            $table->integer('step_number');
            $table->text('step_text');
            $table->string('step_image')->default('recipes-images/default/default_photo.png');
            $table->timestamps();
        });

I thought that I’ll be able to use upsert() but this method requires unique columns (I don’t have those)

Be grateful for some advices

2

1. Fetch Existing Steps

First, retrieve all existing steps for the given recipe_id from the database.

2. Compare and Process

Loop through the incoming $groupedSteps to update or insert records, and track which existing steps are still relevant.

3. Delete Unnecessary Steps

After processing, delete any steps that weren’t included in the new $groupedSteps.

Here’s the code:

use App\Models\GuideStep;

public function updateGuideSteps($recipeId, array $groupedSteps)
{
    // Step 1: Fetch existing steps for the recipe
    $existingSteps = GuideStep::where('recipe_id', $recipeId)
        ->get()
        ->pluck('step_number')
        ->toArray(); // Get array of step_numbers for comparison

    // Step 2: Process incoming steps (update or insert)
    $incomingStepNumbers = [];
    foreach ($groupedSteps as $step) {
        GuideStep::updateOrInsert(
            [
                'recipe_id' => $recipeId,
                'step_number' => $step['step_number'],
            ],
            [
                'step_text' => $step['step_text'],
                'step_image' => $step['step_image'] ?? 'recipes-images/default/default_photo.png', // Fallback to default
            ]
        );
        $incomingStepNumbers[] = $step['step_number']; // Track incoming step numbers
    }

    // Step 3: Delete steps that are no longer in the incoming data
    $stepsToDelete = array_diff($existingSteps, $incomingStepNumbers);
    if (!empty($stepsToDelete)) {
        GuideStep::where('recipe_id', $recipeId)
            ->whereIn('step_number', $stepsToDelete)
            ->delete();
    }
}