Products related to Categories, but how

@drewdan if you define your relationship between Products and Categories

Product

function categories(){

return $this->belongsToMany(Category::class)
}

and in Category

function products(){

return $this->belongsToMany(Product::class)
}

then you'll be able to get the following

• all categories this product is in

$product->categories();

• all products that are in this category.

$category->products();

your relationship has 1 join table between your products & your categories. its not really necessary to make a specific model for this, or define any relationships on that model.

hasManyThrough Eloquent relationship is more complex and uses three database tables.

Upper level table has relationship with many rows of middle level table and middle level table has relationship with many rows of lower level table.

For example, upper level table is shops , middle level table is products and lower level table is orders.

Any shop can have many types of products (electronic, furniture etc). Similarly, products can have more than of one type of order (single order, bulk order etc).

Now, with the use of hasManyThrough() function, we can fetch the records of lower level table orders with model of upper level table shops.

Stolen from here: https://demonuts.com/laravel-hasmanythrough/

I actually have a project with exactly this set up. Personally I don't like the pivot table name in alphabetical order since sometimes the name doesn't make that much sense.

This is what I have

Schema::create('product_categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->integer('product_id')->unsigned();
    $table->integer('category_id')->unsigned();
    $table->foreign('product_id')->references('id')->on('products');
    $table->foreign('category_id')->references('id')->on('categories');
});

Models, since the name is not the conventional one I pass the name of the table to the return

//Category
 public function products()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Product::class, 'product_categories');
    }

//Product
public function categories()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Category::class, 'product_categories');
    }

and as @automica said just call like $product->categories() or vice-versa.

@msslgomez i used to sweat on the pluralization but then when using singular it made more sense as the join table is the connective tissue between 2 singular models.

You can of course call the table whatever you like. I'm happy with convention as it means you don't need to specify the table name in your belongsToMany relationship.

@automica yea I know but sometimes the name doesn't sit well with me haha, I still have a lot to learn but maybe in my next project I'll do it how Laravel intends me following the docs closely.

Ah that makes so much sense now. My boss tried to explain these to me before, but I clearly still did not understand how they worked.

This is perfect, thank you guys :D