Eloquent: Relationships
Introduction
Database tables are often related to one another. For example, a blog post may have many comments, or an order could be related to the user who placed it. Eloquent makes managing and working with these relationships easy, and supports several different types of relationships:
- One To One
- One To Many
- Many To Many
- Has Many Through
- Polymorphic Relations
- Many To Many Polymorphic Relations
Defining Relationships
Eloquent relationships are defined as functions on your Eloquent model classes. Since, like Eloquent models themselves, relationships also serve as powerful query builders, defining relationships as functions provides powerful method chaining and querying capabilities. For example:
$user->posts()->where('active', 1)->get();
But, before diving too deep into using relationships, let's learn how to define each type:
One To One
A one-to-one relationship is a very basic relation. For example, a User
model might be associated with one Phone
. To define this relationship, we place a phone
method on theUser
model. The phone
method should return the results of the hasOne
method on the base Eloquent model class:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class User extends Model
{
/**
* Get the phone record associated with the user.
*/
public function phone()
{
return $this->hasOne('AppPhone');
}
}
The first argument passed to the hasOne
method is the name of the related model. Once the relationship is defined, we may retrieve the related record using Eloquent'sdynamic properties. Dynamic properties allow you to access relationship functions as if they were properties defined on the model:
$phone = User::find(1)->phone;
Eloquent assumes the foreign key of the relationship based on the model name. In this case, the Phone
model is automatically assumed to have a user_id
foreign key. If you wish to override this convention, you may pass a second argument to the hasOne
method:
return $this->hasOne('AppPhone', 'foreign_key');
Additionally, Eloquent assumes that the foreign key should have a value matching theid
column of the parent. In other words, Eloquent will look for the value of the user's id
column in the user_id
column of the Phone
record. If you would like the relationship to use a value other than id
, you may pass a third argument to the hasOne
method specifying your custom key:
return $this->hasOne('AppPhone', 'foreign_key', 'local_key');
Defining The Inverse Of The Relation
So, we can access the Phone
model from our User
. Now, let's define a relationship on the Phone
model that will let us access the User
the owns the phone. We can define the inverse of a hasOne
relationship using the belongsTo
method:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Phone extends Model
{
/**
* Get the user that owns the phone.
*/
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('AppUser');
}
}
In the example above, Eloquent will try to match the user_id
from the Phone
model to anid
on the User
model. Eloquent determines the default foreign key name by examining the name of the relationship method and suffixing the method name with _id
. However, if the foreign key on the Phone
model is not user_id
, you may pass a custom key name as the second argument to the belongsTo
method:
/**
* Get the user that owns the phone.
*/
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('AppUser', 'foreign_key');
}
If your parent model does not use id
as its primary key, or you wish to join the child model to a different column, you may pass a third argument to the belongsTo
method specifying your parent table's custom key:
/**
* Get the user that owns the phone.
*/
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('AppUser', 'foreign_key', 'other_key');
}
One To Many
A "one-to-many" relationship is used to define relationships where a single model owns any amount of other models. For example, a blog post may have an infinite number of comments. Like all other Eloquent relationships, one-to-many relationships are defined by placing a function on your Eloquent model:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Post extends Model
{
/**
* Get the comments for the blog post.
*/
public function comments()
{
return $this->hasMany('AppComment');
}
}
Remember, Eloquent will automatically determine the proper foreign key column on the Comment
model. By convention, Eloquent will take the "snake case" name of the owning model and suffix it with _id
. So, for this example, Eloquent will assume the foreign key on the Comment
model is post_id
.
Once the relationship has been defined, we can access the collection of comments by accessing the comments
property. Remember, since Eloquent provides "dynamic properties", we can access relationship functions as if they were defined as properties on the model:
$comments = AppPost::find(1)->comments;
foreach ($comments as $comment) {
//
}
Of course, since all relationships also serve as query builders, you can add further constraints to which comments are retrieved by calling the comments
method and continuing to chain conditions onto the query:
$comments = AppPost::find(1)->comments()->where('title', 'foo')->first();
Like the hasOne
method, you may also override the foreign and local keys by passing additional arguments to the hasMany
method:
return $this->hasMany('AppComment', 'foreign_key');
return $this->hasMany('AppComment', 'foreign_key', 'local_key');
Defining The Inverse Of The Relation
Now that we can access all of a post's comments, let's define a relationship to allow a comment to access its parent post. To define the inverse of a hasMany
relationship, define a relationship function on the child model which calls the belongsTo
method:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Comment extends Model
{
/**
* Get the post that owns the comment.
*/
public function post()
{
return $this->belongsTo('AppPost');
}
}
Once the relationship has been defined, we can retrieve the Post
model for a Comment
by accessing the post
"dynamic property":
$comment = AppComment::find(1);
echo $comment->post->title;
In the example above, Eloquent will try to match the post_id
from the Comment
model to an id
on the Post
model. Eloquent determines the default foreign key name by examining the name of the relationship method and suffixing the method name with_id
. However, if the foreign key on the Comment
model is not post_id
, you may pass a custom key name as the second argument to the belongsTo
method:
/**
* Get the post that owns the comment.
*/
public function post()
{
return $this->belongsTo('AppPost', 'foreign_key');
}
If your parent model does not use id
as its primary key, or you wish to join the child model to a different column, you may pass a third argument to the belongsTo
method specifying your parent table's custom key:
/**
* Get the post that owns the comment.
*/
public function post()
{
return $this->belongsTo('AppPost', 'foreign_key', 'other_key');
}
Many To Many
Many-to-many relations are slightly more complicated than hasOne
and hasMany
relationships. An example of such a relationship is a user with many roles, where the roles are also shared by other users. For example, many users may have the role of "Admin". To define this relationship, three database tables are needed: users
, roles
, androle_user
. The role_user
table is derived from the alphabetical order of the related model names, and contains the user_id
and role_id
columns.
Many-to-many relationships are defined by writing a method that calls thebelongsToMany
method on the base Eloquent class. For example, let's define the roles
method on our User
model:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class User extends Model
{
/**
* The roles that belong to the user.
*/
public function roles()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('AppRole');
}
}
Once the relationship is defined, you may access the user's roles using the roles
dynamic property:
$user = AppUser::find(1);
foreach ($user->roles as $role) {
//
}
Of course, like all other relationship types, you may call the roles
method to continue chaining query constraints onto the relationship:
$roles = AppUser::find(1)->roles()->orderBy('name')->get();
As mentioned previously, to determine the table name of the relationship's joining table, Eloquent will join the two related model names in alphabetical order. However, you are free to override this convention. You may do so by passing a second argument to the belongsToMany
method:
return $this->belongsToMany('AppRole', 'user_roles');
In addition to customizing the name of the joining table, you may also customize the column names of the keys on the table by passing additional arguments to thebelongsToMany
method. The third argument is the foreign key name of the model on which you are defining the relationship, while the fourth argument is the foreign key name of the model that you are joining to:
return $this->belongsToMany('AppRole', 'user_roles', 'user_id', 'role_id');
Defining The Inverse Of The Relationship
To define the inverse of a many-to-many relationship, you simply place another call tobelongsToMany
on your related model. To continue our user roles example, let's define theusers
method on the Role
model:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Role extends Model
{
/**
* The users that belong to the role.
*/
public function users()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('AppUser');
}
}
As you can see, the relationship is defined exactly the same as its User
counterpart, with the exception of simply referencing the AppUser
model. Since we're reusing thebelongsToMany
method, all of the usual table and key customization options are available when defining the inverse of many-to-many relationships.
Retrieving Intermediate Table Columns
As you have already learned, working with many-to-many relations requires the presence of an intermediate table. Eloquent provides some very helpful ways of interacting with this table. For example, let's assume our User
object has many Role
objects that it is related to. After accessing this relationship, we may access the intermediate table using the pivot
attribute on the models:
$user = AppUser::find(1);
foreach ($user->roles as $role) {
echo $role->pivot->created_at;
}
Notice that each Role
model we retrieve is automatically assigned a pivot
attribute. This attribute contains a model representing the intermediate table, and may be used like any other Eloquent model.
By default, only the model keys will be present on the pivot
object. If your pivot table contains extra attributes, you must specify them when defining the relationship:
return $this->belongsToMany('AppRole')->withPivot('column1', 'column2');
If you want your pivot table to have automatically maintained created_at
and updated_at
timestamps, use the withTimestamps
method on the relationship definition:
return $this->belongsToMany('AppRole')->withTimestamps();
Has Many Through
The "has-many-through" relationship provides a convenient short-cut for accessing distant relations via an intermediate relation. For example, a Country
model might have many Post
models through an intermediate User
model. In this example, you could easily gather all blog posts for a given country. Let's look at the tables required to define this relationship:
countries
id - integer
name - string
users
id - integer
country_id - integer
name - string
posts
id - integer
user_id - integer
title - string
Though posts
does not contain a country_id
column, the hasManyThrough
relation provides access to a country's posts via $country->posts
. To perform this query, Eloquent inspects the country_id
on the intermediate users
table. After finding the matching user IDs, they are used to query the posts
table.
Now that we have examined the table structure for the relationship, let's define it on theCountry
model:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Country extends Model
{
/**
* Get all of the posts for the country.
*/
public function posts()
{
return $this->hasManyThrough('AppPost', 'AppUser');
}
}
The first argument passed to the hasManyThrough
method is the name of the final model we wish to access, while the second argument is the name of the intermediate model.
Typical Eloquent foreign key conventions will be used when performing the relationship's queries. If you would like to customize the keys of the relationship, you may pass them as the third and fourth arguments to the hasManyThrough
method. The third argument is the name of the foreign key on the intermediate model, while the fourth argument is the name of the foreign key on the final model.
class Country extends Model
{
public function posts()
{
return $this->hasManyThrough('AppPost', 'AppUser', 'country_id', 'user_id');
}
}
Polymorphic Relations
Table Structure
Polymorphic relations allow a model to belong to more than one other model on a single association. For example, imagine you want to store photos for your staff members and for your products. Using polymorphic relationships, you can use a singlephotos
table for both of these scenarios. First, let's examine the table structure required to build this relationship:
staff
id - integer
name - string
products
id - integer
price - integer
photos
id - integer
path - string
imageable_id - integer
imageable_type - string
Two important columns to note are the imageable_id
and imageable_type
columns on thephotos
table. The imageable_id
column will contain the ID value of the owning staff or product, while the imageable_type
column will contain the class name of the owning model. The imageable_type
column is how the ORM determines which "type" of owning model to return when accessing the imageable
relation.
Model Structure
Next, let's examine the model definitions needed to build this relationship:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Photo extends Model
{
/**
* Get all of the owning imageable models.
*/
public function imageable()
{
return $this->morphTo();
}
}
class Staff extends Model
{
/**
* Get all of the staff member's photos.
*/
public function photos()
{
return $this->morphMany('AppPhoto', 'imageable');
}
}
class Product extends Model
{
/**
* Get all of the product's photos.
*/
public function photos()
{
return $this->morphMany('AppPhoto', 'imageable');
}
}
Retrieving Polymorphic Relations
Once your database table and models are defined, you may access the relationships via your models. For example, to access all of the photos for a staff member, we can simply use the photos
dynamic property:
$staff = AppStaff::find(1);
foreach ($staff->photos as $photo) {
//
}
You may also retrieve the owner of a polymorphic relation from the polymorphic model by accessing the name of the method that performs the call to morphTo
. In our case, that is the imageable
method on the Photo
model. So, we will access that method as a dynamic property:
$photo = AppPhoto::find(1);
$imageable = $photo->imageable;
The imageable
relation on the Photo
model will return either a Staff
or Product
instance, depending on which type of model owns the photo.
Many To Many Polymorphic Relations
Table Structure
In addition to traditional polymorphic relations, you may also define "many-to-many" polymorphic relations. For example, a blog Post
and Video
model could share a polymorphic relation to a Tag
model. Using a many-to-many polymorphic relation allows you to have a single list of unique tags that are shared across blog posts and videos. First, let's examine the table structure:
posts
id - integer
name - string
videos
id - integer
name - string
tags
id - integer
name - string
taggables
tag_id - integer
taggable_id - integer
taggable_type - string
Model Structure
Next, we're ready to define the relationships on the model. The Post
and Video
models will both have a tags
method that calls the morphToMany
method on the base Eloquent class:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Post extends Model
{
/**
* Get all of the tags for the post.
*/
public function tags()
{
return $this->morphToMany('AppTag', 'taggable');
}
}
Defining The Inverse Of The Relationship
Next, on the Tag
model, you should define a method for each of its related models. So, for this example, we will define a posts
method and a videos
method:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Tag extends Model
{
/**
* Get all of the posts that are assigned this tag.
*/
public function posts()
{
return $this->morphedByMany('AppPost', 'taggable');
}
/**
* Get all of the videos that are assigned this tag.
*/
public function videos()
{
return $this->morphedByMany('AppVideo', 'taggable');
}
}
Retrieving The Relationship
Once your database table and models are defined, you may access the relationships via your models. For example, to access all of the tags for a post, you can simply use thetags
dynamic property:
$post = AppPost::find(1);
foreach ($post->tags as $tag) {
//
}
You may also retrieve the owner of a polymorphic relation from the polymorphic model by accessing the name of the method that performs the call to morphedByMany
. In our case, that is the posts
or videos
methods on the Tag
model. So, you will access those methods as dynamic properties:
$tag = AppTag::find(1);
foreach ($tag->videos as $video) {
//
}
Querying Relations
Since all types of Eloquent relationships are defined via functions, you may call those functions to obtain an instance of the relationship without actually executing the relationship queries. In addition, all types of Eloquent relationships also serve as query builders, allowing you to continue to chain constraints onto the relationship query before finally executing the SQL against your database.
For example, imagine a blog system in which a User
model has many associated Post
models:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class User extends Model
{
/**
* Get all of the posts for the user.
*/
public function posts()
{
return $this->hasMany('AppPost');
}
}
You may query the posts
relationship and add additional constraints to the relationship like so:
$user = AppUser::find(1);
$user->posts()->where('active', 1)->get();
Note that you are able to use any of the query builder on the relationship!
Relationship Methods Vs. Dynamic Properties
If you do not need to add additional constraints to an Eloquent relationship query, you may simply access the relationship as if it were a property. For example, continuing to use our User
and Post
example models, we may access all of a user's posts like so:
$user = AppUser::find(1);
foreach ($user->posts as $post) {
//
}
Dynamic properties are "lazy loading", meaning they will only load their relationship data when you actually access them. Because of this, developers often use eager loadingto pre-load relationships they know will be accessed after loading the model. Eager loading provides a significant reduction in SQL queries that must be executed to load a model's relations.
Querying Relationship Existence
When accessing the records for a model, you may wish to limit your results based on the existence of a relationship. For example, imagine you want to retrieve all blog posts that have at least one comment. To do so, you may pass the name of the relationship to the has
method:
// Retrieve all posts that have at least one comment...
$posts = AppPost::has('comments')->get();
You may also specify an operator and count to further customize the query:
// Retrieve all posts that have three or more comments...
$posts = Post::has('comments', '>=', 3)->get();
Nested has
statements may also be constructed using "dot" notation. For example, you may retrieve all posts that have at least one comment and vote:
// Retrieve all posts that have at least one comment with votes...
$posts = Post::has('comments.votes')->get();
If you need even more power, you may use the whereHas
and orWhereHas
methods to put "where" conditions on your has
queries. These methods allow you to add customized constraints to a relationship constraint, such as checking the content of a comment:
// Retrieve all posts with at least one comment containing words like foo%
$posts = Post::whereHas('comments', function ($q) {
$q->where('content', 'like', 'foo%');
})->get();
Eager Loading
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. To illustrate the N + 1 query problem, consider a Book
model that is related to Author
:
<?php
namespace App;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
class Book extends Model
{
/**
* Get the author that wrote the book.
*/
public function author()
{
return $this->belongsTo('AppAuthor');
}
}
Now, let's retrieve all books and their authors:
$books = AppBook::all();
foreach ($books as $book) {
echo $book->author->name;
}
This loop will execute 1 query to retrieve all of the books on the table, then another query for each book to retrieve the author. So, if we have 25 books, this loop would run 26 queries: 1 for the original book, and 25 additional queries to retrieve the author of each book.
Thankfully, we can use eager loading to reduce this operation to just 2 queries. When querying, you may specify which relationships should be eager loaded using the with
method:
$books = AppBook::with('author')->get();
foreach ($books as $book) {
echo $book->author->name;
}
For this operation, only two queries will be executed:
select * from books
select * from authors where id in (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...)
Eager Loading Multiple Relationships
Sometimes you may need to eager load several different relationships in a single operation. To do so, just pass additional arguments to the with
method:
$books = AppBook::with('author', 'publisher')->get();
Nested Eager Loading
To eager load nested relationships, you may use "dot" syntax. For example, let's eager load all of the book's authors and all of the author's personal contacts in one Eloquent statement:
$books = Book::with('author.contacts')->get();
Constraining Eager Loads
Sometimes you may wish to eager load a relationship, but also specify additional query constraints for the eager loading query. Here's an example:
$users = AppUser::with(['posts' => function ($query) {
$query->where('title', 'like', '%first%');
}])->get();
In this example, Eloquent will only eager load posts that if the post's title
column contains the word first
. Of course, you may call other query builder to further customize the eager loading operation:
$users = AppUser::with(['posts' => function ($query) {
$query->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
}])->get();
Lazy Eager Loading
Sometimes you may need to eager load a relationship after the parent model has already been retrieved. For example, this may be useful if you need to dynamically decide whether to load related models:
$books = AppBook::all();
if ($someCondition) {
$books->load('author', 'publisher');
}
If you need set additional query constraints on the eager loading query, you may pass aClosure
to the load
method:
$books->load(['author' => function ($query) {
$query->orderBy('published_date', 'asc');
}]);
Inserting Related Models
The Save Method
Eloquent provides convenient methods for adding new models to relationships. For example, perhaps you need to insert a new Comment
for a Post
model. Instead of manually setting the post_id
attribute on the Comment
, you may insert the Comment
directly from the relationship's save
method:
$comment = new AppComment(['message' => 'A new comment.']);
$post = AppPost::find(1);
$comment = $post->comments()->save($comment);
Notice that we did not access the comments
relationship as a dynamic property. Instead, we called the comments
method to obtain an instance of the relationship. The save
method will automatically add the appropriate post_id
value to the new Comment
model.
If you need to save multiple related models, you may use the saveMany
method:
$post = AppPost::find(1);
$post->comments()->saveMany([
new AppComment(['message' => 'A new comment.']),
new AppComment(['message' => 'Another comment.']),
]);
Save & Many To Many Relationships
When working with a many-to-many relationship, the save
method accepts an array of additional intermediate table attributes as its second argument:
AppUser::find(1)->roles()->save($role, ['expires' => $expires]);
The Create Method
In addition to the save
and saveMany
methods, you may also use the create
method, which accepts an array of attributes, creates a model, and inserts it into the database. Again, the difference between save
and create
is that save
accepts a full Eloquent model instance while create
accepts a plain PHP array
:
$post = AppPost::find(1);
$comment = $post->comments()->create([
'message' => 'A new comment.',
]);
Before using the create
method, be sure to review the documentation on attribute mass assignment.
Updating "Belongs To" Relationships
When updating a belongsTo
relationship, you may use the associate
method. This method will set the foreign key on the child model:
$account = AppAccount::find(10);
$user->account()->associate($account);
$user->save();
When removing a belongsTo
relationship, you may use the dissociate
method. This method will reset the foreign key as well as the relation on the child model:
$user->account()->dissociate();
$user->save();
Many To Many Relationships
Attaching / Detaching
When working with many-to-many relationships, Eloquent provides a few additional helper methods to make working with related models more convenient. For example, let's imagine a user can have many roles and a role can have many users. To attach a role to a user by inserting a record in the intermediate table that joins the models, use the attach
method:
$user = AppUser::find(1);
$user->roles()->attach($roleId);
When attaching a relationship to a model, you may also pass an array of additional data to be inserted into the intermediate table:
$user->roles()->attach($roleId, ['expires' => $expires]);
Of course, sometimes it may be necessary to remove a role from a user. To remove a many-to-many relationship record, use the detach
method. The detach
method will remove the appropriate record out of the intermediate table; however, both models will remain in the database:
// Detach a single role from the user...
$user->roles()->detach($roleId);
// Detach all roles from the user...
$user->roles()->detach();
For convenience, attach
and detach
also accept arrays of IDs as input:
$user = AppUser::find(1);
$user->roles()->detach([1, 2, 3]);
$user->roles()->attach([1 => ['expires' => $expires], 2, 3]);
Syncing For Convenience
You may also use the sync
method to construct many-to-many associations. The sync
method accepts an array of IDs to place on the intermediate table. Any IDs that are not in the given array will be removed from the intermediate table. So, after this operation is complete, only the IDs in the array will exist in the intermediate table:
$user->roles()->sync([1, 2, 3]);
You may also pass additional intermediate table values with the IDs:
$user->roles()->sync([1 => ['expires' => true], 2, 3]);