Eloquent relationships between different types of User (based on Role)

Yeah, this is a perfect example of a polymorphic relationship.

However, I would personally not create different Teacher and Student models. In the end, they are all users. I would probably create a user's table and have a many-to-many relationship between a user and a role. So a user can be both a teacher and a student at the same time in theory.

If the user can only have one rule, then I would store the role simply on the user itself and have a many-to-many relationship between the user and the group.

@bobbybouwmann Thanks for reading/ replying.

I have the roles set up as many-to-many relationships, I actually implemented it exactly as Jeffrey explains here https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-6-from-scratch/episodes/54

I'm just confused about relationship clashes, eg:

// App\User
// Teacher (User) has many classes.
    public function classes()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(Group::class, 'teacher_id');
    }

// Student (User) belongs to many classes.
    public function classes()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Group::class);
    }

As these are all just Users, is it acceptable to rename the methods (to avoid a clash) and peform a check before the relationships like:

    // App\User
    // Teacher has many classes.
    public function classesOfStudents()
    {
        if ($this->hasAnyRole(['teacher', 'admin'])) {
        return $this->hasMany(Group::class, 'teacher_id');
        }
    }

    // Student can be in many classes.
    public function studyGroups()
    {
        if ($this->hasAnyRole(['student'])) {
            return $this->belongsToMany(Group::class);
        }
        
    }

Yeah, that is perfectly fine but I always find this very confusing in your models in the end. Would you still understand this code in 6 months?

I always try to keep my relationships as simple as possible. So no Student or Teach class. Just a user that belongs to many x. Keep in mind that I don't know all of your requirements and restrictions.

Thanks man. It's great to have another dev's insight.

I will give it a shot at writing something more readable using only a User model.

If I come up with something I'm happy with I will comment it here to help others.

@perdanjam Awesome