CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phplaravelrestapi
Ian Rodrigues
Ian Rodrigues

Reputation: 743

API route to a Many-To-Many relationship

I have a related REST API question.

I have 2 entities, Product and Store, which has a many-to-many relationship between them. A Product may be available in 0 or more Stores and a Store may have 0 or more Products.

But I need a route to add a Product to a Store and also a route to remove a Product from a Store. The relationship is simple, there is no extra column in the pivot table.

Which approach would you use?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1808

Answers (3)

Martius Lim
Martius Lim

Reputation: 81

If your Products cannot exist without a Store and must belong to a Store, then it makes sense to nest the route under Stores.

For example:

Add a new Product to a Store 

POST /api/store/:id/product/:id

Delete a Product from a Store 

DELETE /api/store/:id/product/:id

Either way, it still seems more logical to nest the API routes for adding/deleting products to/from stores, under Store. With this design, the Store is the main focus and you are adding or deleting products from it. It is simple and easy to understand and follow.

Whereas in the alternative design, the Product is the main focus and you are adding stores in which it is being sold in or deleting stores in which it is no longer being sold in. It becomes more complicated than necessary.

Upvotes: 2

Matt Timmermans
Matt Timmermans

Reputation: 59303

If you work for the Product company, and you're keeping track of which stores carry which products, then you would POST to /api/product/{id} to add the store.

If you work for the Store company, which decides which products to carry in which stores, then you would POST to /api/store/{id} to add a product.

Note that I suggest POST, because neither operation is actually creating a product or store.

Upvotes: 0

jeugen
jeugen

Reputation: 342

You simply should define in your product store method, that your saved product belongs to chosed stores.

Take a look in Laravel documentation

Upvotes: 0

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