Categories and Subcategories

You have only one level of subcategories or many levels ?

Also 4.3 ? It is called laravel 5 now :)

Just one level of subcategories - I meant the version before 5... my bad!

If only one level it is a simple self referencing belongs to / has many relationship.

Put a parent_id in your categories table. Then in your Category model :

public function parent()
{
    return $this->belongsTo('Category', 'parent_id');
}

public function children()
{
    return $this->hasMany('Category', 'parent_id');
}

Then you can get the subcategories of a category like this : $subcategories = $category->children.

If you want to avoid to execute one query per category to retrieve its children you can use eager loading :

$categories = Category::with('children')->get();

And then you can loop through it like so:

@foreach($navigation as $item)
    @if($item->children->count() > 0)
        <li class="dropdown">
             <a href="#">{{ $item->name }} <span class="caret"></span></a>
             <ul>
                 @foreach($item->children as $submenu)
                     <li><a href="/{{ $submenu->slug }}">{{ $submenu->name }}</a></li>
                  @endforeach
             </ul>
       </li>
    @else
        <li><a href="/{{ $item->slug }}">{{ $item->name }}</a></li>
    @endif
@endforeach

That's look workable, but i identified the issue with this approach. look at this menu printed on web page when i tried your example.

• Category 1
• Category 2
  • Category 4
• Category 3
• Category 4
  • Category 5
• Category 5

Now the issue with this is Category 4 and 5 are also displaying as individual, but they lie only in their parent category and are not separate. what could be the solution for this.

@pmall you need to add namespace for your snippet to work. In case you tried the code and got "Class 'Category' not found", add the your namespace to it to solve the error:

public function parent()
{
    return $this->belongsTo('App\Category', 'parent_id');
}

public function children()
{
    return $this->hasMany('App\Category', 'parent_id');
}

select * from test.menu as m
left outer join (select parent_id from test.menu where parent_id != null) as m2 
on m.parent_id = m2.parent_id

Make SQL Your Friend!

Using the snippet above, I will like to display parent category and its children under it. Something:

Fashion Accessories
  - Bags
  - Cloths
Mobile Phones
  - Tablets
  - Smartphones

How do I do such in a view

You could also just use self::class if want to reuse the code easier...

return $this->hasMany(self::class, 'parent_id');

What about if I want to have more then one level of sub categories?