CODEWITHSUNDEEP
laravellaravel-4eloquent
panthro
panthro

Reputation: 24061

A many to many relationship

I've read the docs on relationships and have a few questions.

I have a user and a role table. The relationship is many to many. A user has many roles and a role can belong to many users. So I have set up a pivot table and have used a belongsToMany in each model. But surely a user hasMany roles and a role belongsToMany users.

But when I use hasMany, my queries do not work as expected. Is this just a wording thing and both should be belongsToMany?

I also wanted to know about defining the relationship on each model - do you need to or can it just be defined on users?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 108

Answers (2)

Peter Blazovics
Peter Blazovics

Reputation: 71

I advice to you, study this description: http://scotch.io/tutorials/php/a-guide-to-using-eloquent-orm-in-laravel

It will be useful for you.

(You should use only "belongToMany" in each model without "hasMany")

User model:

// app/models/User.php
<?php

class User extends Eloquent {

    // each user BELONGS to many role
    // define our pivot table also
    public function roles() {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Role', 'users_roles', 'user_id', 'role_id');
    }

}

Role model:

// app/models/Role.php
<?php

class Role extends Eloquent {

    // DEFINE RELATIONSHIPS --------------------------------------------------
    // define a many to many relationship
    // also call the linking table
    public function users() {
        return $this->belongsToMany('User', 'users_roles', 'role_id', 'user_id');
    }

}

Upvotes: 1

RMcLeod
RMcLeod

Reputation: 2581

The hasMany relationship is for defining one to many relationships and that is why it will break your queries.

I can see why you are thinking along the lines of a user having many roles, but it also perfectly good English to say a user belongs to many roles and that a role belongs to many users.

You don't need to define the relationship on both models if you are only going to query one model and it's relationship. But can you say definitively that you will never need to query the relationship on roles?

Upvotes: 1

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