In Laravel, a Many-to-Many relationship allows for a more flexible and dynamic relationship between two database tables. Many-to-many relationships are common in real-world scenarios, where many items or entities can be related to many other items or entities.
In this blog, we’ll cover the basics of a Many-to-Many relationship in Laravel, including database schema, code, and three real-life examples.
A Many-to-Many relationship requires a third table to establish the relationship between two tables. For example, let’s consider a real-world scenario where we have two tables: users and roles. One user can have multiple roles, and one role can be assigned to multiple users. So, we need a third table role_user to establish the Many-to-Many relationship between users and roles table.
Here’s how the database schema for the three tables would look like:
users table:
- id
- name
- email
- password
roles table:
- id
- name
role_user table:
- id
- role_id
- user_id
In the role_user table, the role_id and user_id columns are foreign keys that reference the id columns of the roles and users tables respectively.
Suppose we have a music streaming app where users can follow many artists, and an artist can have many followers. In this scenario, we can use a Many-to-Many relationship between the users and artists tables.
Here’s how the database schema would look like:
users table:
- id
- name
- email
- password
artists table:
- id
- name
artist_user table:
- id
- artist_id
- user_id
To retrieve all the artists followed by a particular user, we can define the Many-to-Many relationship in the User model:
class User extends Model
{
public function artists()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Artist::class);
}
}
And to retrieve all the followers of an artist, we can define the Many-to-Many relationship in the Artist model:
class Artist extends Model
{
public function followers()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(User::class);
}
}
We can use eager loading to retrieve all the artists followed by a particular user and all the followers of an artist in a single database query:
$user = User::with('artists')->find(1);
$artist = Artist::with('followers')->find(1);
Suppose we have a recipe sharing app where users can save many recipes, and a recipe can be saved by many users. In this scenario, we can use a Many-to-Many relationship between the users and recipes tables.
Here’s how the database schema would look like:
users table:
- id
- name
- email
- password
recipes table:
- id
- name
- ingredients
- instructions
recipe_user table:
- id
- recipe_id
- user_id
To retrieve all the recipes saved by a particular user, we can define the Many-to-Many relationship in the User model:
class User extends Model
{
public function recipes()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Recipe::class);
}
}
And to retrieve all the users who saved a particular recipe, we can define the Many-to-Many relationship in the Recipe model:
class Recipe extends Model
{
public function users()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(User::class);
}
}
We can use eager loading to retrieve all the recipes saved by a particular user and all the users who saved a particular recipe in a single database query:
$user = User::with('recipes')->find(1);
$recipe = Recipe::with('users')->find(1);
Suppose we have a job board app where companies can post many jobs, and a job can be posted by many companies. In this scenario, we can use a Many-to-Many relationship between the `companies` and `jobs` tables.
Here’s how the database schema would look like:
companies table:
-id
-name
-website
jobs table:
-id
-title
-description
company_job table:
-id
-company_id
-job_id
To retrieve all the jobs posted by a particular company, we can define the Many-to-Many relationship in the `Company` model:
class Company extends Model
{
public function jobs()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Job::class);
}
}
And to retrieve all the companies that posted a particular job, we can define the Many-to-Many relationship in the `Job` model:
class Job extends Model
{
public function companies()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Company::class);
}
}
We can use eager loading to retrieve all the jobs posted by a particular company and all the companies that posted a particular job in a single database query:
$company = Company::with('jobs')->find(1);
$job = Job::with('companies')->find(1);
Many-to-Many relationships are a powerful way to establish dynamic relationships between database tables in Laravel. In this blog, we covered the basics of Many-to-Many relationships, including database schema, code, and three real-life examples. With the help of eager loading, we can efficiently retrieve related data in a single database query.
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