What is the best practices way of managing many ManyToMany relationships in Models?

Let's say I'm following the three normal forms for Normalization in databases here:

http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/definition/normalization

I end up with many tables related to other tables, mostly centered around one specific table (say, users).

As far as I've found, Models can only handle one table at a time and the correct way to do this is to create multiple models with something like this in them:

return $this->belongsToMany('App\OtherModel');

The specific thing I'm doing is creating an application process for people to apply for a job. If this leads to 5 different tables, I then have to create 5 different models and with all 5 having 5 "belongsToMany" lines in them. Unless there's a way to specify multiple models within a single belongsToMany, but still...

Am I missing something about this process that would make creating and managing so many relationships easier?

Paschal

8 years ago

Best Answer

Level 2

Each of them has to be explicit. Relationships in Eloquent are not magic and has to be defined by you.

This line of code is your way out or better still, get a full understanding of Relationships, understand how your database communicates and you might not have to do many relationships.

return $this->belongsToMany('App\OtherModel');

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