Today, I spent a good amount of hours troubleshooting an issue involving database transactions. Thankfully, with the assistance of a teammate, the problem is now resolved.

Consider the following example code:

<?php

DB::transaction(function () {
    $user = User::factory()->create();
    dump($user->exists) // true
    dump($user->id) // displays the id as if the record was actually persisted in the DB

    // Imagine some HTTP request to an external webapp which shares the same database
    DB::table('users')->where('id', $user->id)->count() // 0
});

In this scenario, we initiate a database transaction in which a model is created. Subsequently, a call is made to another service that shares the same database, and this service attempts to query the database for the newly created user. However, the service will be unable to locate the database record.

The underlying reason is that within a transaction, the objects are not committed to the database until the transaction is completed. Therefore, although the user ID may be correctly generated and displayed, the record itself is not yet persisted in the database.

While this concept is fundamental and I am well-acquainted with how database transactions operate, I nonetheless encountered this issue. Documenting this experience will hopefully prevent me from making the same mistake in the future and maybe help others too.