Best practice for CRUD process to manage many to many relations such as product-categories

@Cvetan Using resourceful controllers, you might have a ProductCategoryController, with an update method that looks like this:

class ProductCategoryController extends Controller
{
    public function update(Request $requst, Product $product)
    {
        $product->categories()->sync($request->input('category'));
    }
}

The route might look like this:

Route::put('products/{product}/categories', 'ProductCategoryController@update');

Submit a category[] array to this URI, and it’ll sync the given category IDs on the product.

Yeah, but that will not be separate from product update.

It needs to happen on product update. Othervise i would select product categories on separate form? If i understood you right?

@Cvetan You can use the same code when updating a product:

class ProductController extends Controller
{
    public function update(UpdateProductRequest $request, Product $product)
    {
        $product->update($request->all());

        $product->categories()->sync($request->input('category'));

        // Redirect back to edit form or something
    }
}

@martinbean So i don't need to ignore that in product data? I thought if i use $request->all() for product i need somehow ignore categories input.

@Cvetan So long as your properties are properly fillable, it’ll just disregard any input data that doesn’t match a fillable property.

OK. I will try it. Thanks.