Many to many relationship with roles

Yes, you can have an extra column in the intermediate table, so you have defined it correctly except the id field is unnecessary in the community_user table.

So the relationship can be setup as such:

// User.php

public function communities() 
{
   return $this->belongsToMany(Community::class)->withPivot('role');
}

// Community.php


public function users() 
{
   return $this->belongsToMany(User::class)->withPivot('role');
}

Then in order to save in the DB you can call:

$user->communities()->attach($communityId, ['role' => $role]);

Don't know what type will your role be, either an enum or int. But I believe this is enough information to continue.

Perhaps user has to have many CommunityRole (CommunityRole belongs to user) where CommunityRole model also belongs to Role (Role has many CommunityRole). Also CommunityRole belongs to Community

It might be possible to use role_id on the community_user table but I don't know how you would differentiate between them when for instance asking for user's communities.

edit: I changed my mind above. This will be different to the email you got

I'm assuming that roles are defined in a table.

@NAKOV - Worked like a charm. Thank you