Pessimistic Locking in Laravel Eloquent with refreshForUpdate()

What Is refreshForUpdate()?

Laravel has long provided two separate tools for working with database rows inside transactions:

• refresh() — reloads a model's attributes from the database.
• lockForUpdate() — appends FOR UPDATE to a query, preventing other transactions from reading or modifying the row until the lock is released.

What was missing was a way to do both on an existing model instance without rebuilding the query manually. Laravel 13.27 fills that gap with refreshForUpdate(), contributed by @stevebauman in #61247.

How It Works Under the Hood

The implementation is concise:

public function refreshForUpdate()
{
    if (! $this->exists) {
        return $this;
    }

    return $this->refreshUsingQuery(
        $this->newQueryWithoutScopes()->lockForUpdate()
    );
}

It delegates to refreshUsingQuery() — the same internal helper that powers refresh() — but passes a query that already has lockForUpdate() applied. That helper:

1. Scopes the query to the model's primary key.
2. Routes the query through useWritePdo() so a read replica cannot serve a lock you are about to depend on.
3. Calls firstOrFail() to fetch the row.
4. Replaces the model's raw attributes in place.
5. Reloads any relations that were already eager-loaded.
6. Syncs the original attribute state.

The only addition refreshForUpdate() makes over a plain refresh() is the FOR UPDATE lock.

Before and After

Before Laravel 13.27

To safely decrement stock while preventing concurrent overselling, you had to re-query the model explicitly inside the transaction:

public function purchase(Product $product): Response
{
    DB::transaction(function () use ($product) {
        $product = Product::query()
            ->lockForUpdate()
            ->findOrFail($product->getKey());

        if ($product->stock === 0) {
            throw new RuntimeException('The product is out of stock.');
        }

        $product->decrement('stock');
    });

    // ...
}

This works, but it requires you to reassign $product and remember to call lockForUpdate() every time.

After Laravel 13.27

With refreshForUpdate() you call the method directly on the model instance:

public function purchase(Product $product): Response
{
    DB::transaction(function () use ($product) {
        $product->refreshForUpdate();

        if ($product->stock === 0) {
            throw new RuntimeException('The product is out of stock.');
        }

        $product->decrement('stock');
    });

    // ...
}

The model is refreshed with the latest database values and locked for the duration of the transaction — in one readable line.

Key Takeaways

• refreshForUpdate() is available from Laravel 13.27 onward.
• It combines refresh() and lockForUpdate() into a single Eloquent method call.
• The query is always routed to the write PDO connection, preventing stale reads from a replica.
• If the model does not exist ($this->exists === false), the method returns early without querying.
• It must be called inside a DB::transaction() block; a FOR UPDATE lock has no effect outside a transaction.
• Already-loaded Eloquent relations are refreshed automatically alongside the model's own attributes.

Source: Pessimistic Locking in Laravel Eloquent with refreshForUpdate() — Laravel News