Many to many relationships in Yii2 - yii2

Question

I am trying to create a many to many relationship between a profile and several fields within that profile including languages and specialities. I have looked at several implementations and understand that there are several extensions, but I am required to minimise usage of extensions.
I have created the proper migration...this is a skeleton and the user table is purely for logins and OAuth...so keys can be ignored. As you can see in my controller I don't really know the way forward at this point. My language model is for all intensive purposes static from this controller(It is controlled by an admin backend). What is working? If I make a couple modifications to the below code then the checkboxlist will display with the proper checked items that I manually added to the lookup table. Trying to modify the lookup table from code, I have been unable to do unless I populate the $languageModel with a findOne(knownPK), however that is not usable, because multiple checkboxes can be selected resulting in an array and the link command requires ActiveRecordInterface which is singular. Ideally I would like to simply use
$languageModel->load(Yii::$app->request->post(),$trainerModel->formName());
but that isn't working.
Additionally, is there a mechanism within the framework to remove lookups or is that done manually. Any help or insight would be helpful. Thank you in advance.
public function safeUp()
{
$this->createTable('student', [
'id' => $this->primaryKey(),
'user_id' => $this->integer()->notNull(),
]);
$this->createTable('language', [
'id' => $this->primaryKey(),
'language' => $this->string(63),
]);
$this->createTable('student_language',[
'id' => $this->primaryKey(),
'language_id' => $this->integer(),
'student_id' => $this->integer()
]);
$this->addForeignKey('fk-student-language-language', 'student_language', 'language_id', 'language', 'id', 'CASCADE', 'CASCADE');
$this->addForeignKey('fk-student-language-student', 'student_language', 'student_id', 'student', 'id', 'CASCADE', 'CASCADE');
$this->addForeignKey('fk-student-user-user_id', 'student', 'user_id', 'user', 'id', 'CASCADE', 'CASCADE');
}
My student Active Record
/**
* #return \yii\db\ActiveQuery
*/
public function getstudentLanguages()
{
return $this->hasMany(studentLanguage::className(), ['student_id' => 'id']);
}
public function getLanguages(){
return $this->hasMany(Language::className(),['id'=>'language_id'])->viaTable('student_language',['student_id'=>'id']);
}
My Language Model
/**
* #return \yii\db\ActiveQuery
*/
public function getstudentLanguages()
{
return $this->hasMany(studentLanguage::className(), ['language_id' => 'id']);
}
public function getLanguages(){
return $this->hasMany(student::className(),['id'=>'student_id'])->viaTable('student_language',['language_id'=>'id']);
}
My Controller
public function actionProfile()
{
if (Yii::$app->user->isGuest) {
throw new UnauthorizedHttpException('This page requires you to be logged in');
} else {
$user_id = Yii::$app->user->identity->getId();
$studentModel = $this->findstudentModelByUserId($user_id);
if (is_null($studentModel)) {
$studentModel = new student();
$studentModel->setAttribute('user_id', $user_id);
$studentModel->save();
}
$languageModel = ??????????????????
$studentModel->load(Yii::$app->request->post()) && $studentModel->save() && $studentModel->link('languages',$languageModel);
}
return $this->render('profile', ['model' => $studentModel]);
}
My View
<?= $form->field($model, 'languages')->checkboxList(\common\models\Language::find()->select(
['language', 'id'])->indexBy('id')->column(), ['prompt' => 'select Language']); ?>

Answer 1

This is my solution at this point, however I am interested to hear improvements.
Note: There is no error checking etc...just functional code.
I added this to the student activerecord class
public function linkMultiple( $name,Array $models){
studentLanguage::deleteAll(['student_id' =>$this->id]);
foreach($models as $model){
$this->link($name, $model);
}
return true;
}
Modified my Controller action to the following
public function actionProfile()
{
if (Yii::$app->user->isGuest) {
throw new UnauthorizedHttpException('This page requires you to be logged in');
} else {
$user_id = Yii::$app->user->identity->getId();
$studentModel = $this->findstudentModelByUserId($user_id);
if (is_null($studentModel)) {
$studentModel = new student();
$studentModel->setAttribute('user_id', $user_id);
$studentModel->save();
}
$languages = Yii::$app->request->post('student')['languages'];
$languageModels = Language::findAll($languages);
$studentModel->load(Yii::$app->request->post()) && $studentModel->save() && $studentModel->linkMultiple('languages',$languageModels);
}
return $this->render('profile', ['model' => $studentModel]);
}