In Laravel it is possible to use the hasMany() and belongsTo() methods in the Model to specify the relation between tables. This for one-to-many relations.
However in the migration files, this relation is also specified for the database by the
$table->foreign('userId')->references('id')->on('users')
Why does it to be specified double in Laravel?
Why does Laravel doesn't fetch the relationship from the database, and do we have to specify it double?
Laravel offers hasMany() and belongsTo() etc for quicker access to parent/child records between tables on the model level. For instance, you may access the child record with ->{attr}, which makes the child record as if an attribute of the parent record.
It also comes with other benefits, such as eager loading of child record by providing the relationship parameter into ->with() function.
In comparison, the usage of relation in migration files are to enforce relationship between tables on database level.
Related
Laravel Version: 5.5
PHP Version: 7+
Database Driver & Version: mysql 5.7+
Scenario:
I have a SaaS application that has flexible database structure, so its fields are bound to change, especially given it has a Json field (for any extra database structure to be created from client side of the application), including relationship based fields. so Account Table can have dynamically created employee_id field, and thus the need to access relationships dynamically
Problem:
I need to EagerLoad models based on this dynamic relationship. If I had something like this:
// Account Model
public function employee(){
return $this->belongsTo(App\Employee);
}
it would be easy. But what I have is this:
public function modelBelongsTo(){
return $this->belongsTo($dynamicClassName, $dynamicForeignKey);
}
Now if I eager load this, I'll get Account Model instance with related Employee on key modelBelongsTo. This is how Eloquent Names based on the function of eagerload. But after this I cannot use this function again to eagerload a second model because it'll just overwrite results on modelBelongsTo key.
Possible Solution Directions:
1) Can I Somehow change laravel's process to use a name I provide?
or
2) Can I write functions on the fly to overcome this so I'll write employee function on the fly?
or
3) Worst Case Scenario: I iterate over all records to rename their keys individually because I am using a pagination, it wouldn't that big of a deal to loop over 10 records.
Us a morph relationship
define the various dynamic classnames say
Employee
Boss
Morph works by having the related key and the table name stored in the parent table, it means to relate them you have to use a join or an orm and you cant have foreign key constraint on it as it links to different tables.
then have your account have morphs where
we have
Account
as top class
then we have
EmployeeAccount, BossAccount
which have their relation to boss and employee
then in Account have morphto relation call it specificAccount()
to which in its child morphs have the morph relation to Account
then add it to $with so to eager load them so when fetching account you could simply do
$account ->specificAccount
to get its morph child. which is nullable
This is totally dynamic such that if you have other classes in future you can just add and add the morph relationship. This may be applied to any reflection or runtime evaluated and loaded classes/code though it is not advisable to do this, as you can always edit code to create new functionality without affecting previous.
I have multiple models which can and can be followed by each other i.e. Business, Agency, Vendor, User.
The schema of the above scenario is as follows:
id follower_id follower_type followable_id followable_type
Is there any relationship for the above case in Laravel? How can I create relationship and use eloquent methods?
I have a rather complex structure that contains multiple relations. If my relations are defined this way, how can I load all of them in one call?
Model
(has many) ChildModels1
Child1a
Child1b
...
(has many) ChildModels2
Child2a
Child2b
...
(has many) ChildModels3
Child3a
Child3a
Child3aa
Child3ab
...
I'm able to do the following:
$entity = Entity::find($id)->load('ChildModels1', 'ChildModels2', 'ChildModels3');
But I'm not sure how to load all the child relations too.
This can be achieved with Eager Loading:
Entity::where('id', $id)->with('relation1.subrelation1', 'relation1.subrelation2', 'relation2.subrelation1', 'relation2.subrelation2')->get();
When accessing Eloquent relationships as properties, the relationship
data is "lazy loaded". This means the relationship data is not
actually loaded until you first access the property. However, Eloquent
can "eager load" relationships at the time you query the parent model.
Eager loading alleviates the N + 1 query problem.
You can read more about this in the Laravel documentation on eager loading.
In my database schema, I have multiple tables that hold generic data for objects, for instance I have a user table and a user_data, post table and post_data, and so. these *_data tables all hold a foreign key to the object and a pair of key-value. now in my laravel models I would like to have a single data models for these tables (rather than a model for every single one) and represent the has_many relation in a dynamic way where somehow I can define the table name according to the parent model. I think the parent model would have something like:
return $this->hasMany('data');
but I don't know how to express the inverse relation nor how to tell laravel which *_data table to use. so my question is, is it possible? and if so, how?
You have two options.
Either create a model for each data_* table and use the relation as stated with $this->hasMany('data'); and $this->belongsTo('User'); in the data table and the user table.
Or you can use Polymorphic relations, I personally prefer the polymorphic relations solution, more neat.
Laravel 4.1 introduced the hasManyThrough relationship. This assumes 2 relating hasMany relationships. I however would like to retrieve the hasMany relationships of a belongsTo relationship instead.
Project (id, contact_id, ...)
Contact (id, ...)
Address (id, contact_id, ...)
For each project, I would like to get all addresses.
I managed to do this using a belongsTo() relationship and some additional table joining. However, a belongsTo relationship binds a single object, instead of an array.
So my thoughts are I either need to:
... be able to override the LIMIT 1 behavior on belongsTo relationships
... or be able to override the hasManyThrough to work with a belongsTo as intermediate relationship.
It sounds like you are trying to set up a many-to-many relationship between Projects and Contacts, with a one-to-one relationship between Address and Contact. If that is the case you will need to create a pivot table "project_contact" with columns "project_id" and "contact_id" as well as any other columns (timestamps(), etc). Then you can set a "belongsToMany('Project')" relationship on the Contacts.
I'm not sure if that is what you're after, but it solves the problem as I understand it.