How and why to use pivot model?

I've used many-to-many relationships in my work quite a lot and I was getting by well with just having models with belongsToMany in them and a pivot table in database.

If I needed to get roles for a user, I'd use $user->roles, if users for a role, then $role->users, supplementing them with ->pivot->[column_name] or ->withPivot() if needed.

However, in the recent task I was told to have a model for a pivot table:

php artisan make:model MyPivotModel --pivot

I don't understand the use case for it, why would I need it, and what useful functionality the Eloquent pivot model would give me?

For the lack of online tutorials on the subject, I decided to ask this here.

kokoshneta

3 years ago

Level 27

From the docs:

If you would like to define a custom model to represent the intermediate table of your many-to-many relationship, you may call the using method when defining the relationship. Custom pivot models give you the opportunity to define additional behavior on the pivot model, such as methods and casts.

There’s no need for a pivot model if your pivot table contains only simple data that you don’t need to manipulate, cast or do other advanced stuff with; but sometimes you do need to do advanced stuff with the data in your pivot table, and a pivot model makes sense then.

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OussamaMater

3 years ago

Level 37

@kokoshneta And here's a use case for what @kokoshneta stated

https://pineco.de/easy-role-management-pivot-models/

dmag

3 years ago

Level 6

@OussamaMater I've read that article. Still it didn't help.

Sinnbeck

3 years ago

Level 102

@dmag Maybe explain what you arent understanding? The tutorial shows a clear usecase for the model. Read "Extending the Pivot Model"

OussamaMater

3 years ago

Level 37

@dmag well what exactly was unclear? the author wanted to have a feature where they test if a user has a specific permission on a specific role, what would be the best place to put all the logic related to roles and permissions? well the Role model (which happens to be the pivot we defined in our many-to-many relationship) is the best place.

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