How Eloquent work with Relationship? - mysql

Question

I'm new to laravel relationship so many apologizes if it's just dumb question. I'm using a pivot table named users_email on the project to get Emails of users. Pivot table contains the foreign key Uid and Email_id. Uid references users table
primary key and the same as Email_id. I can get the result while joining them using QueryBuilder.
$recent_inbox_email=DB::table('users_email')->
join('email','users_email.email_id','=','email.Id')->
join('users','users_email.Uid','=','users.Id')->
where('users_email.Uid','=',$Uid)->
where('email.draft','<>','true')->
where('email.trash','<>','true')->
where('email.status','=','unread')->count();
here's how I define the relationship in my models
public function getUid()//User Model
{
return $this->hasMany("User_Email",'Uid');
}
public function getEmId()//Email Model
{
return $this->hasMany("User_Email",'email_id');
}
//User_Email Model
public function email()
{
return $this->belongsTo('Email','Id','email_id');
}
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('User','Id','Uid');
}
Now I want to query something like this using Eloquent
$query= select * from users_email inner join
email on users_email.email_id=email.Id
inner join users on users_email.Uid=users.Id
where users.Id=users_email.Uid limit 0,10
foreach($query as $emails)
{
echo $emails->f_name;
echo $emails->Message
}
DB designer Pic
Link to image
Thanks

Answer 1

There are no dumb questions. I'll try to give you an explanation! I'm not a pro, but maybe I can help.
Laravel uses some conventions that are not mandatory, but if you use them, things work like a charm.
For example, as a general recommendation, tables should be named in plural (your table users is ok. Your "email" table should be "emails"). The model, should be named in singular. This is User.php for table users, Email.php for table emails.
"The pivot table is derived from the alphabetical order of the related model names...", in this case "email_user". I repeat, you are not obliged to name them like this, as you can specify the table for the model setting the $table property in the model.
Once you have set up things like this, you only have to add this to your User model:
public function emails()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('Email');
}
And in your Email model:
public function users()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('User');
}
The "User" and "Email" between parentheses is the name of the related model.
And that's it. You can now do this:
$user = User::find(1);
foreach($user->emails as $email) {
echo $email->subject . '<br>';
echo $email->message . '<br>';
}
If you decide not to follow conventions, you can still use Eloquent relationships. You have to set up the relationship like this:
public function nameOfRelation()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('NameOfRelatedModel', 'name_of_table', 'foreign_key', 'other_key');
}
In the case of the User model for example:
public function emails()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('Email', 'users_email', 'Uid', 'email_id');
}
And in the email model, the other way round.
The answer got long! I didn't test the code, but this should give you an idea!
You can always check the official Laravel documentation, it is really helpful!
http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/eloquent
Hope I helped