Craft 3 - Save new Entry with Relations (Categories/Assets)

Question

i simply can not get my "job" done. I try to create a plugin for Craft, a simple one. It reads some date and should create new entries out of this data. First i stuck on a stupid save-mistake, someone here helped me get my error :)

Now, i can create and save an entry. But i can not add a category, an image or a matrix-based entry. I tried several old craft 2 tutorials and got with the categories to Craft::$app->relations->saveRelations, but after i got rid of all errors, it saves my entry, create a ne row in my database relation table, but in the entry, i can not find the relation. The database row in relations seems to be incorrect. Last version of my code: i tried to convert this Problem/Example into my version in craft 3. No success :(

I think, if i understand my problem, i will be able to create several relations, because categories, Assets and so on are just types of fields. And they are related to the entries - am i right ?

I'll show my current code.....has anyone a good advise or an example how to add a relation(category) and how to create and add an image asset ?

    $section = Craft::$app->sections->getSectionByHandle('mychannelentryhandle');
    $entryTypes = $section->getEntryTypes();
    $entryType = $entryTypes[0];
    $entry = new \craft\elements\Entry();
    //      $entry->id = $uid;
    $entry->title = $title;
    $entry->sectionId = $section->id;
    $entry->typeId = $entryType->id;
    $entry->siteId = 1;
    $entry->authorId = 1;
    $entry->enabled = true;  // TODO:  Decide if published or not
    $entry->postDate = $postDate;
    $entry->slug = 'test_' . $uid;



    if (Craft::$app->elements->saveElement($entry)) {
        echo 'New entry created successfully.';

        // SAVE CATEGORY RELATION
        $field = Craft::$app->fields->getFieldByHandle('categoryfieldhandle');
        try {
            $relationsIds[] = $entry->id;
            Craft::$app->relations->saveRelations($field, $category, $relationsIds);
        } catch (\Exception $e) {
            // Something went wrong – return `false` or an error message, log the exception?
            print_r('ERROR WHILE SAVING CATEGORY');
            print_r($e->getMessage());
            return false;
        }

        // Save the new Relation
        Craft::$app->elements->saveElement($entry);

        $result = true;
    } else {
        echo 'Could not save the new entry.' . "\n";
        print_r($entry->getErrors());
        $result = false;
    }

Just testing code, not pretty but functional ;)

Answer 1

This should be as simple as setting the relation field (category, asset, etc.) value on the entry as an array of related element IDs before saving.

$entry->setFieldValue('categoryFieldHandle', [$categoryId1, $categoryId2]);

Craft::$app->elements->saveElement($entry);

This will work for all relation fields:

$entry->setFieldValue('assetFieldHandle', [$assetId1, $assetId2]);

Craft::$app->elements->saveElement($entry);