Eloquent restore() function on soft deletes failing to restore

Question

I recently added soft deletes on my user model and the delete part of it works perfectly, however when I try to restore I get an error that says Call to a member function restore() on a non-object.

My code for restoring a soft deleted user is as follows:

public function putActivateUser()
    {
        $user = Emp::onlyTrashed()->where('id', '=', Input::get('actEmpId'))->first();
        $user->restore();

        return Redirect::route('user_data')
        ->with('message', 'Bruker '.$user->user_name.' aktivert.');
    }

The form for the user activation:

{{ Form::open(array('url' => 'bassengweb/ressurect_user', 'method' => 'PUT')) }} 
        {{ Form::select('actEmpId', $deactEmps) }}
        {{ Form::submit('Aktiver Bruker') }}
{{ Form::close() }}

A dd on $user returns null for some reason, but I can't see why.

Answer 1

Apparently user with id from the form is not found with onlyTrashed scope. You should check the query (run DB::getQueryLog() for example) and data in your db, but first change the method to firstOrFail:

$user = Emp::onlyTrashed()->where('id', '=', Input::get('actEmpId'))->firstOrFail();

It will throw ModelNotFoundException if nothing was found, so you can catch it and do whatever is needed, thus avoid calling method on null error.

Answer 2

Try this

Emp::withTrashed()->where('id','=',Input::get('actEmpId'))->restore();