How do I connect 4 tables in Laravel 7? - mysql

Question

So basically I have 4 tables
The employees, payrolls and employees_payrolls(pivot table) table are already connected through a many-to-many relationship and is working fine. Is it possible to fetch the basic_pay(from positions table) column through positions_id at employees table(which is already connected through the many-to-many relationship) so that I can perform calculation on payroll table that will base on employees basic pay?

Answer 1

you can not use $payroll->employees->positions->basic_pay because $payroll->employees
this gives you a collection of employees, each employee has many positions, so if you perform $payroll->employees->positions->basic_pay it makes collections in a collection, like below :
Payroll
Employee-1
Position-1->basic_pay
Position-2->basic_pay
Employee-2
Position-1->basic_pay
Position-2->basic_pay
.
.
.
if you perform $payroll->employees->positions->basic_pay the structure does not make sense in Laravel collection so you first perform $payroll->employees then loop through each and perform second loop on $employee->positions and next you will get $position->basic_pay

Answer 2

You will need to add a belongsTo relationship in your Employee model:
/**
* Get the employee's position.
*/
public function position()
{
return $this->belongsTo(Position::class,'positions_id');
}
Now if you wish to access it you will need to do the folllowing:
//get a payroll from database
$payroll = Position::find(1);
//get your payroll employees then iterate through each one
foreach($payroll->employees as $employee) {
//access to this employee position attributes
$employee->position;
}