title: Laravel 1048 Column cannot be NULL on storing data
body: <p>When I'm trying to save a new contact I'm getting <code>1048 Column 'username' cannot be NULL</code> error. It's pretty obvious that cause of this error is empty value of <code>username</code>, however I'd like to make it work without setting a column to NULL or checking if <code>username</code> POST data is empty and then setting it's value to <code>''</code>. </p>
  
  <p>I've seen numerous of examples, where column is not set to NULL and/or data is not set to <code>''</code> before saving to database. </p>
  
  <p>Or maybe I'm wrong and I missed something ? </p>
  
  <p>I hope someone could comment on that..</p>
  
  <pre><code>$contact = new Contact;
  $contact-&gt;name      = Input::get('name'); 
  $contact-&gt;username  = Input::get('username');
  $nerd-&gt;save();
  </code></pre>