Laravel 5.2 - Use a String as a Custom Primary Key for Eloquent Table becomes 0

Theres two properties on the model you need to set. The first $primaryKey to tell the model what column to expect the primary key on. The second $incrementing so it knows the primary key isn't a linear auto incrementing value.

class MyModel extends Model
{
    protected $primaryKey = 'my_column';

    public $incrementing = false;
}

For more info see the Primary Keys section in the documentation on Eloquent.

On the model set $incrementing to false

public $incrementing = false;

This will stop it from thinking it is an auto increment field.

Laravel Docs - Eloquent - Defining Models

This was added to the upgrade documentation on Dec 29, 2015, so if you upgraded before then you probably missed it.

When fetching any attribute from the model it checks if that column should be cast as an integer, string, etc.

By default, for auto-incrementing tables, the ID is assumed to be an integer in this method:

https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/5.2/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php#L2790

So the solution is:

class UserVerification extends Model
{
    // if your key name is not 'id'
    // you can also set this to null if you don't have a primary key
    protected $primaryKey = 'your_key_name';

    public $incrementing = false;

    // In Laravel 6.0+ make sure to also set $keyType
    protected $keyType = 'string';
}