Retrieving table via relational table in Laravel models - many-to-many

Question

I have a database called "recipe-book" that looks like this:
+-----------------------+
| Tables_in_recipe-book |
+-----------------------+
| ingredients |
| migrations |
| recipe_categories |
| recipe_ingredients |
| recipes |
| users |
+-----------------------+
I have set up models in Laravel for a users recipes so I can return them like this:
$user = User::findOrFail($id);
return $user->recipes;
This works perfectly, however, now I naturally want to list the ingredients for a given recipe right? I want to do something similar like this
$recipe = Recipe::findOrFail($id);
return $recipe->ingredients;
The problem for me now is how to understand how to achieve this. In my database I have a relational table called "recipe_ingredients" for each ingredient like so:
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| recipe_id | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| ingredient_id | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| quantity | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
The idea is that I can then more easily retrieve all the recipes that contain a specific ingredient. What I want though when I run:
return $recipe->ingredients;
Is both the "quantity" column from the relational table, as well as the information about that specific recipe, i.e. the table "ingredients".
How would I go about this?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

If you have something like this as models:
<?php
class User extends Eloquent {
public function recipes()
{
return $this->hasMany('Recipe');
}
}
class Recipe extends Eloquent {
public function ingredients()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('Ingredient', 'recipe_ingredients')->withPivot('quantity');
}
}
class Ingredient extends Eloquent {
public function recipes()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('Recipe', 'recipe_ingredients')->withPivot('quantity');
}
}
And now you can do
Route::get('/test', function()
{
$user = User::find(1);
var_dump($user->email);
foreach($user->recipes as $recipe)
{
var_dump($recipe->name);
foreach($recipe->ingredients as $ingredient)
{
var_dump($ingredient->name);
var_dump($ingredient->pivot->quantity);
}
foreach($ingredient->recipes as $recipe)
{
var_dump($recipe->name);
var_dump($recipe->pivot->quantity);
}
}
});
This is the migration I used here:
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
class CreateIngredientsTable extends Migration {
/**
* Run the migrations.
*
* #return void
*/
public function up()
{
Schema::create('recipes', function($table)
{
$table->increments('id');
$table->integer('user_id');
$table->string('name');
});
Schema::create('ingredients', function($table)
{
$table->increments('id');
$table->string('name');
});
Schema::create('recipe_ingredients', function($table)
{
$table->integer('recipe_id');
$table->integer('ingredient_id');
$table->string('quantity');
});
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*
* #return void
*/
public function down()
{
Schema::dropIfExists('recipes');
Schema::dropIfExists('ingredients');
Schema::dropIfExists('recipe_ingredients');
}
}