Hello community,

I am Laravel newbie, so please, be patient with me.

My tables:

artists
- id
- name

songs
- id
- title

artistables
- id
- artist_id
- artistable_id
- artistable_type
- joinphrase
- order

My models are set up correctly, I guess, because I can save and retrieve data, so I won't post them (they are pretty basic anyway, just with morphToMany / morphedByMany).

My admin.song.edit view, I managed to build my create / edit form, so it benefits from Form Model Binding:

@forelse($song->artists as $key => $artist)
					<div class="ui-state-default" id="artist">
						<div class="form-group">
							<div class="col-sm-1 col-sm-offset-1">
								{!! Form::text('artists[' . $key . '][pivot][order]', null, ['class' => 'form-control', 'type' => 'number', 'readonly']) !!}
							</div>
							<div class="col-sm-2">
								{!! Form::text('artists[' . $key . '][pivot][joinphrase]', null, ['class' => 'form-control', 'type' => 'text']) !!}
							</div>
							<div class="col-sm-4">
								{!! Form::select('artists[' . $key . '][id]', [null => 'Select...'] + $artists->toArray(), null, ['class' => 'form-control']) !!}
							</div>
							<div class="col-sm-2">
								<a class="btn btn-default">
									<span class="glyphicon glyphicon-move" aria-hidden="true"></span>
								</a>
							</div>
						</div>
					</div>
					@empty
					<div class="form-group">
						<div class="col-sm-1 col-sm-offset-1">
							{!! Form::text('artists[0][pivot][order]', null, ['class' => 'form-control', 'type' => 'number', 'readonly']) !!}
						</div>

						<div class="col-sm-2">
							{!! Form::text('artists[0][pivot][joinphrase]', null, ['class' => 'form-control', 'type' => 'text']) !!}
						</div>

						<div class="col-sm-4">
							{!! Form::select('artists[0][id]', [null => 'Select...'] + $artists->toArray(), null, ['class' => 'form-control']) !!}
						</div>
					</div>
					@endforelse

^^^ This works perfectly and form is automagically populated with my database data, BUT... to make this work, inputs with data from pivot table must have model[pivot][column] name, while sync() method expects them in format (id => ['column' => 'value']).

Right now I do it like this in my SongController:

public function update(Request $request, $id)
    {
        $input = $request->all();

        // Song
    	$song = Song::findOrFail($id);
        $song->update($request->all());

        $artists = [];
		
        // Cycle through Artists and rebuild array for sync(), TODO: creation of non-existent Artists on the fly
        foreach($input['artists'] as $artist)
        {
            $artists[$artist['id']] = $artist['pivot'];
        }
		
        // Sync Artists
        $song->artists()->sync($artists);
        
        return redirect()->route('admin.song.edit', [$song]);
    }

It WORKS, but is this the best / only way? Or is there some better, cleaner and more "magical" approach? Something like passing array to $song->update(); which takes care of relationships:

Thanks for your replies. :)