Laravel model: instance or relationship? - laravel-5

Question

I'm not a professional programmer, so I don't know that I'm describing this very well.
Eloquent relationships are established in the model, using syntax and functions such as ... - >belongsTo.. etc.
Behind these models, are tables in my database.
In my (laravel) application, I have a logged in user who needs certain information about other users. At the end of the day, they're all just users, persisting in the user's table.
So when I use a relationship to another object, (e.g. car) all is good. When I try use a relationship to another user I get errors like Cannot redeclare class App\Models\User.
I think I'm misunderstanding something here.
I get the feeling maybe I should be 'instantiating' another version of my User (as 'manager') ... But do I really need to? It's more of a lookup than anything else. I'm not sure I would even know how to do that.
Some pointers please?

Answer 1

It sounds like you created two distinct "User" models:
// /app/User.php:
<?php namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class User extends Model
{
// ...
public function user() {
return $this->hasOne('App\Models\User');
}
}
// /app/models/User.php:
<?php namespace App\Models;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class User extends Model
{
// ...
public function user() {
return $this->belongsTo('App\User');
}
}
Instead you want to have a single class which belongs to itself:
// /app/User.php:
<?php namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class User extends Model
{
// ...
public function parent() {
return $this->belongsTo('App\User');
}
public function children() {
return $this->hasMany('App\User');
}
}
Then in your database make sure that the users table has a user_id property (edit database/migrations/2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table.php):
$table->integer('user_id')->unsigned()->nullable();
$table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users');
Now you can attach users to one another:
<?php
$manager = new User();
$employeeOne = new User();
$employeeTwo = new User();
$manager->children()->saveMany([
$employeeOne,
$employeeTwo
]);
dd( $employeeTwo->parent->name ); // Manager's name