How to save a new entry with custom fields - Craft 3

Question

I'm trying to create a new Entry via PHP, with custom fields (Craft 3). I can save it, however my custom fields don't appear. I've tried using setFieldValue, as well as $entry->excerpt = 'Lorem...';, however neither work.

My code is below, using craft\elements\Entry:

$entry = new Entry();
$entry->sectionId = 4;
$entry->typeId = 4;
$entry->authorId = 1;
$id = uniqid('product_');
$entry->title = $id;
$entry->slug = $id;

$entry->setFieldValue('excerpt', 'Lorem...');

if(Craft::$app->elements->saveElement($entry)) {
    return $entry;
} else {
    throw new \Exception("Couldn't save new bespoke product: " . print_r($entry->getErrors(), true));
}

Answer 1

It turns out the data wasn't being saved as I hadn't set a fieldLayoutId value.

Now that I've figured this out, I've written a helper method to make saving any entry type much easier:

public static function saveNewEntry(string $handle, array $fields) {

    $entryType = EntryType::find()->where(['handle' => $handle])->one();

    $entry = new Entry();    
    $entry->sectionId = $entryType->getAttribute('sectionId');         
    $entry->typeId = $entryType->getAttribute('id');      
    $entry->fieldLayoutId = $entryType->getAttribute('fieldLayoutId');     
    $entry->authorId = 1; 

    if(isset($fields['title'])) { 
        $entry->title = $fields['title'];     
        unset($fields['title']); 
    }

    if(isset($fields['slug'])) {
        $entry->slug = $fields['slug'];     
        unset($fields['slug']);
    }

    $entry->setFieldValues($fields);

    if(Craft::$app->elements->saveElement($entry)) {
        return $entry;
    } else {
        throw new \Exception("Couldn't save new bespoke product: " . print_r($entry->getErrors(), true)); 
    }
}

This can be used like so:

return self::saveNewEntry('article', [
    'title' => $id,
    'slug' => $id,
    'excerpt' => $excerpt,
    'body' => $body
]);