Dear @tykus,

thank you very much for your answer!

I would always normalise in this situation, if the entries table has tags, then someone will eventually want to filter by tag(s)... then you'll need to normalise.

I kept watching the tutorial and the solution the teacher proposed goes like this:

CONTROLLER

public function index()
{
	return view('listings.index', [
	'listings' => Listing::latest()->filter(request(['tag', 'search']))->paginate(6)
	]);
}

MODEL

if($filters['tag'] ?? false) // WHY do we need null-coalescing operator here??
{
$query->where('tags', 'like', '%' . request('tag') . '%');
}

Is this an acceptable solution?

I feel so lost with Laravel right now.

In the past, I have always done everything by hand (raw mysql queries, vanilla PHP), but now, in Laravel, I am struggling to decide what is good or bad.

PS.: May I kindly ask you for a link to a simple yet well-written tutorial on normalizing in Laravel? I have only done it by hand so far.

Thank you @tykus for your answer!

I still feel somehow lost.

It took me, like, 5 minutes to whip up a working mysql test case for what I want to do.

In Laravel, I would not even have the slightest idea of how to achieve this...

CREATE TABLE `entries` (
`id` INT(255) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`title` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`description` TEXT NOT NULL,
UNIQUE KEY(`id`)
);


CREATE TABLE `tags` (
`id` INT(255) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
UNIQUE KEY(`id`)
);


CREATE TABLE `entries_tags` (
`id` INT(255) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`entry_id` INT(255) NOT NULL,
`tag_id` INT(255) NOT NULL,
UNIQUE KEY(`id`)
);


INSERT INTO `entries` VALUES (1, 'First', 'Lorem Ipsum');
INSERT INTO `entries` VALUES (2, 'Second', 'Dolor sit');
INSERT INTO `entries` VALUES (3, 'Third', 'Amet');

INSERT INTO `tags` VALUES (1, 'nice');
INSERT INTO `tags` VALUES (2, 'cute');
INSERT INTO `tags` VALUES (3, 'sweet');

INSERT INTO `entries_tags` VALUES (1, 1, 3);
INSERT INTO `entries_tags` VALUES (2, 1, 2);
INSERT INTO `entries_tags` VALUES (3, 2, 1);
INSERT INTO `entries_tags` VALUES (4, 3, 1);
INSERT INTO `entries_tags` VALUES (5, 3, 3);



SELECT `entries`.`id`, `entries`.`title`, `entries`.`description` FROM `entries` INNER JOIN `entries_tags` ON `entries`.`id` = `entries_tags`.`entry_id` WHERE `entries_tags`.`tag_id` = 3;

Edit:

Maybe somebody can point me to a good resource online?

Googling "normalization" and "mysql" and "laravel" did not lead me to good tutorials.