Bulk Insertion in Laravel using eloquent ORM

You can just use Eloquent::insert().

For example:

$data = [
    ['name'=>'Coder 1', 'rep'=>'4096'],
    ['name'=>'Coder 2', 'rep'=>'2048'],
    //...
];

Coder::insert($data);

We can update GTF answer to update timestamps easily

$data = array(
    array(
        'name'=>'Coder 1', 'rep'=>'4096',
        'created_at'=>date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
        'modified_at'=> date('Y-m-d H:i:s')
       ),
    array(
         'name'=>'Coder 2', 'rep'=>'2048',
         'created_at'=>date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
         'modified_at'=> date('Y-m-d H:i:s')
       ),
    //...
);

Coder::insert($data);

Update: to simplify the date we can use carbon as @Pedro Moreira suggested

$now = Carbon::now('utc')->toDateTimeString();
$data = array(
    array(
        'name'=>'Coder 1', 'rep'=>'4096',
        'created_at'=> $now,
        'modified_at'=> $now
       ),
    array(
         'name'=>'Coder 2', 'rep'=>'2048',
         'created_at'=> $now,
         'modified_at'=> $now
       ),
    //...
);

Coder::insert($data);

UPDATE2: for laravel 5 , use updated_at instead of modified_at

$now = Carbon::now('utc')->toDateTimeString();
$data = array(
    array(
        'name'=>'Coder 1', 'rep'=>'4096',
        'created_at'=> $now,
        'updated_at'=> $now
       ),
    array(
         'name'=>'Coder 2', 'rep'=>'2048',
         'created_at'=> $now,
         'updated_at'=> $now
       ),
    //...
);

Coder::insert($data);

This is how you do it in more Eloquent way,

    $allinterests = [];
    foreach($interests as $item){ // $interests array contains input data
        $interestcat = new User_Category();
        $interestcat->memberid = $item->memberid;
        $interestcat->catid = $item->catid;
        $allinterests[] = $interestcat->attributesToArray();
    }
    User_Category::insert($allinterests);

To whoever is reading this, check out createMany() method.

/**
 * Create a Collection of new instances of the related model.
 *
 * @param  array  $records
 * @return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection
 */
public function createMany(array $records)
{
    $instances = $this->related->newCollection();

    foreach ($records as $record) {
        $instances->push($this->create($record));
    }

    return $instances;
}

I searched many times for it, finally used custom timestamps like below:

$now = Carbon::now()->toDateTimeString();
Model::insert([
    ['name'=>'Foo', 'created_at'=>$now, 'updated_at'=>$now],
    ['name'=>'Bar', 'created_at'=>$now, 'updated_at'=>$now],
    ['name'=>'Baz', 'created_at'=>$now, 'updated_at'=>$now],
    ..................................
]);

Eloquent::insert is the proper solution but it wont update the timestamps, so you can do something like below

 $json_array=array_map(function ($a) { 
                        return array_merge($a,['created_at'=> 
                                            Carbon::now(),'updated_at'=> Carbon::now()]
                                           ); 
                                     }, $json_array); 
 Model::insert($json_array);

The idea is to add created_at and updated_at on whole array before doing insert

$start_date = date('Y-m-d h:m:s');        
        $end_date = date('Y-m-d h:m:s', strtotime($start_date . "+".$userSubscription['duration']." months") );
        $user_subscription_array = array(
          array(
            'user_id' => $request->input('user_id'),
            'user_subscription_plan_id' => $request->input('subscription_plan_id'),
            'name' => $userSubscription['name'],
            'description' => $userSubscription['description'],
            'duration' => $userSubscription['duration'],
            'start_datetime' => $start_date,
            'end_datetime' => $end_date,
            'amount' => $userSubscription['amount'],
            'invoice_id' => '',
            'transection_datetime' => '',
            'created_by' => '1',
            'status_id' => '1', ),
array(
            'user_id' => $request->input('user_id'),
            'user_subscription_plan_id' => $request->input('subscription_plan_id'),
            'name' => $userSubscription['name'],
            'description' => $userSubscription['description'],
            'duration' => $userSubscription['duration'],
            'start_datetime' => $start_date,
            'end_datetime' => $end_date,
            'amount' => $userSubscription['amount'],
            'invoice_id' => '',
            'transection_datetime' => '',
            'created_by' => '1',
            'status_id' => '1', )
        );
        dd(UserSubscription::insert($user_subscription_array));

UserSubscription is my model name. This will return "true" if insert successfully else "false".

Maybe a more Laravel way to solve this problem is to use a collection and loop it inserting with the model taking advantage of the timestamps.

<?php

use App\Continent;
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;

class InitialSeeder extends Seeder
{
    /**
     * Run the database seeds.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function run()
    {
        collect([
            ['name' => 'América'],
            ['name' => 'África'],
            ['name' => 'Europa'],
            ['name' => 'Asia'],
            ['name' => 'Oceanía'],
        ])->each(function ($item, $key) {
            Continent::forceCreate($item);
        });
    }
}

EDIT:

Sorry for my misunderstanding. For bulk inserting this could help and maybe with this you can make good seeders and optimize them a bit.

<?php

use App\Continent;
use Carbon\Carbon;
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;

class InitialSeeder extends Seeder
{
    /**
     * Run the database seeds.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function run()
    {
        $timestamp = Carbon::now();
        $password = bcrypt('secret');

        $continents = [
            [
                'name' => 'América'
                'password' => $password,
                'created_at' => $timestamp,
                'updated_at' => $timestamp,
            ],
            [
                'name' => 'África'
                'password' => $password,
                'created_at' => $timestamp,
                'updated_at' => $timestamp,
            ],
            [
                'name' => 'Europa'
                'password' => $password,
                'created_at' => $timestamp,
                'updated_at' => $timestamp,
            ],
            [
                'name' => 'Asia'
                'password' => $password,
                'created_at' => $timestamp,
                'updated_at' => $timestamp,
            ],
            [
                'name' => 'Oceanía'
                'password' => $password,
                'created_at' => $timestamp,
                'updated_at' => $timestamp,
            ],
        ];

        Continent::insert($continents);
    }
}

From Laravel 5.7 with Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder you can use insertUsing method.

$query = [];
foreach($oXML->results->item->item as $oEntry){
    $date = date("Y-m-d H:i:s")
    $query[] = "('{$oEntry->firstname}', '{$oEntry->lastname}', '{$date}')";
}

Builder::insertUsing(['first_name', 'last_name', 'date_added'], implode(', ', $query));

For category relations insertion I came across the same problem and had no idea, except that in my eloquent model I used Self() to have an instance of the same class in foreach to record multiple saves and grabing ids.

foreach($arCategories as $v)
{                
    if($v>0){
        $obj = new Self(); // this is to have new instance of own
        $obj->page_id = $page_id;
        $obj->category_id = $v;
        $obj->save();
    }
}

without "$obj = new Self()" it only saves single record (when $obj was $this)

Problem solved... Alter table for migrate

$table->timestamp('created_at')->nullable()->useCurrent();

Solution:

Schema::create('spider_news', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->bigIncrements('id');
    $table->string('source')->nullable();
    $table->string('title')->nullable();
    $table->string('description')->nullable();
    $table->string('daterss')->nullable();

    $table->timestamp('created_at')->useCurrent();
    $table->timestamp('updated_at')->useCurrent();
});