Get data through pivot table in Laravel - laravel

Question

I got 3 tables. Table 1 & 2 has their ids as foreign keys in third one(pivot).
Relations for first one is
$this->hasMany("App\Pivot","game_id");
, second is
$this->belongsToMany("App\Pivot","army_id");
and pivot has relationships with both of them i.e belongsTo.
My schema:
I tried accessing it in controller of first one like this:
$games= Game::with("armies")->get();
Result that i get is array of games where instead of individual army data , i get collection from pivot table.
I can loop through it and get it that way, is there more elegant way of doing it?

Answer 1

If you are using pivot table this is the way how to do it.
Games Model
public function armies()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(App\Armies::class, 'pivot_table', 'game_id', 'army_id');
}
Armies Model
public function armies()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(App\Games::class, 'pivot_table', 'army_id', 'game_id');
}
Access the relationship like this..
Controller
App\Games::first()->armies()->get();
or
App\Games::first()->armies
or
App\Games::find(1)->armies

Answer 2

If you're going to use an intermediate table like that I'd probably do something like this:
Games model
public function armies()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Armies');
}
Armies model
public function games()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Games');
}
I'd keep the table structures all the same but rename the "pivot" table to armies_games since this is what Laravel will look for by default. If you want to keep it named Pivots, you'll need to pass it in as the second argument in belongsToMany.
With this, you don't really need the Pivot model, you should just be able to do:
$armies = Game::first()->armies()->get();
or
$armies = Game::find(3)->armies()->orderBy('name')->get();
or
$game = Game::first();
foreach ($game->armies as $army) {
//
}
etc.