Laravel 5.4 Model Relationship - laravel

Question

I have created three tables users, courses and user_courses as shown below
CREATE TABLE `users` (
`id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`password` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
`address` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`remember_token` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`status` enum('0','1') COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`created_at` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL,
`updated_at` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_ci
CREATE TABLE `courses` (
`id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`title` text,
`description` text,
`price` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
`schedule` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
`duration` varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL,
`summary` text,
`skills` text,
`mode` enum('0','1') DEFAULT NULL COMMENT '0-Online 1 -Instructor',
`random_token` text,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CREATE TABLE `user_courses` (
`id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`user_id` bigint(20) DEFAULT NULL,
`course_id` bigint(20) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
Now with these tables, I want to bind relationship such as when I fetch Users I'm able to get courses for a user and when I get to courses I want users associated with the course.
Please help how I can achieve it.

Answer 1

I have got my answer so posting it here if it can help anyone.
The main thing here is to assign a many-to-many relationship. In my user model I have defined
public function courses()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Course');
}
In course model
public function users()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\User');
}
Actually, it depends on how you want to use the relationship.In some parts of the code you will need $user->courses or more likely to query $course->users or both.
Now here user_course table will be assumed as a pivot table. So in model, you can write it as
public function courses()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Course', 'user_courses');
}
Here you can also specify the actual names of the fields of that particular pivot table i.e user_courses table.Then, what all we have to do is just add two more parameters first is the current model field and then add the field of the model being joined like
public function courses()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Course', 'user_courses','user_id', 'course_id');
}
So using the above model relationship you can easily fetch users with all the respective courses by
User::->with('courses')->get();

Answer 2

First Fix
First, fix the user_course table structure the users table has id as integer while it's being referenced in user_course in user_id as bigint.
Solution
The first thing to do is to create models in the application. Then create relationships within models and finally use those relationships.
Create models
By using command line
php artisan make:model Course
php artisan make:model UserCourse
You can create them manually if you like. By default, they will be created in app folder with namespace App. For example, the user model will be App/User and so on.
The user model will already exists as its shipped with laravel default installation.
Create relationships
In user model add the following function
public function courses()
{
$this->belongsToMany(Course::class, 'user_course');
}
You can leave the Course Model empty if you are not planning to make a reverese relation from course to user. The one above defines relation from user to courses
Usage
Say in a controller you can use this as
public function someFunctionInController()
{
$usersWithCourses = \App\User::with('courses')->get()->toArray();
//result of a single user record will look something like this
/**
[
'id' => 1,
'name' => 'some name'
... //other users table columns
//the courses will be an array of array content and will be automatically injected
'courses' => [[
'id' => 1 //the course id
... //course table columns,
'pivot' => [
'user_id' => 1,
'course_id' => 1
]
],[
'id' => 3 //the course id
... //course table columns,
'pivot' => [
'user_id' => 1,
'course_id' => 3
]
]]
]
**/
}