Level 80
@cristian9509 I’d say you have a User model, and then use pivot tables for the relations as to which user managers other users, which users are customers etc.
Aug 28, 2015
9
Level 4
Polymorphics relations or regular?
I have this schema
All the relations here must be one-to-zero/one.
A user can be either an employee or a customer. The user_type ENUM gives me the type so I know where to go from there.
Then an employee can be either basic or a manager. The employee_type discriminator let's me know that.
How am I supposed to build the Eloquent Model relations?
Let's say I have a user that is an employee. I need to get it's common fields from the users table but also need to get common fields from employees table. Do I need to hard code, and know that when user_type=emp I need to select from the employees table? What if I need to add another user type later?
Level 4
Why would I use a pivot when I know for sure that a user can only be of one type? So a user that is employee and manager cannot be a customer, cannot be a employee and basic. Am I missing something on my design?
Level 52
Can you change your schema or do you want to use Eloquent on this schema without modification ?
Level 4
@bestmomo I can still change the schema. However I am also interested to see how or if this is possible with Eloquent!
Would I need to have all my models pointing directly to the user and get rid of the employee table?
User is customer
User is employee_manager
User is employee_basics
Level 8
One to One polymorphic relation is suitable for this kind of relationship. Not many to many or not one to many polymorph. It is morphOne relationship .
Level 4
@veve286 Can you please explain a bit more on how to deal with the creation of a user. Will I have to include lots of IFs to deal with a new user creation?
For example creating a manager employee user:
User->userable->employeable->create(...)
or customer user
User->userable->create(..)
?
Level 52
Looks like a morhOne relation is suitable in this case.
users table should have fields :
- userable_id
- userable_type
User model should have a morphTo relation with Employe and Customer
Employe and Customer models should have a morphOne relation with User model.
Level 4
@bestmomo
I am still trying to figure out why a polymorphic model would be better than a regular one. Let me go on both routes.
Let's go for the following scenario:
- I want to access
manager_tooldata from themanagerstable for the user withid=11(the id on theuserstable). - I want to access
customer_statusdata from thecustomerstable for the user withid=17.
Polymorphic (assuming I have set all the required morph... relations)
//1
$managerTool = User::find(11)->userable()->employable()->get()->manager_tool;
//2
$customerStatus = User::find(17)->userable()->get()->customer_status;
Normal (assuming again that I have all the required has... belongs... relations)
//1
$managerTool = User::find(11)->employee()->manager()->get()->manager_tool;
//2
$customerStatus = User::find(17)->customer()->get()->customer_status;
I see the difference but don't really understand why would this help me? Is there anything Laravel & Polymorphism specific that I can read and get a better idea?
2 likes
Level 4
i also would like to know
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