I need help on Laravel Polymorphic Relationship on Many to Many

Question

I'm current developing a professional site for my organization whereby i have the following models:

  employee
      id
      employee_no
      full_name

   skill
      id
      name

   sector
      id
      name

   field
      id
      name
      sector_id

The relationship are as following:-

• Employee has many Skills and also one or many employees can have one skill
• Employee can work in different sectors and also one or many employees can work in one sector
• Employee can work in different sector fields and also one or many employees can work in one sector field

as you can see the relationship there is many to many between

employee & skill, employee & sector and employee & fields

so i created three tables to handle these relationships the tables are as following:

employe_skill
   id
   employee_id
   skill_id

employe_sector
   id
   employee_id
   sector_id

employee_field
   id
   employee_id
   filed_id

From the above you may see three tables but almost have the similarity. I need help on how to convert this relationship to polymorphic where i can have only one table.

Answer 1

Despite the similarity between skill and sector the model you propose with three joining tables is completely valid. If the entities differs enough in an conceptual level, different models are completely justified. Would recommend to create an Entity Relationship diagram to pinpoint the consistency of the system.

Here is how to implement those many to many relationships easily in Laravel.

Good luck!