Getting multiple pivot tables results together as 1 data set - php

Question

I have the following data structure in my laravel application
user_comments
id - integer
name - string
created_at - timestamp
user_actions
id - integer
name - string
created_at - timestamp
users
id - integer
name - string
user_history
user_id - integer
history_id - integer
history_type - string
And my App\Models\User contains the following relationships
/**
* Get all of the comments that are associated with this user.
*/
public function comments() : BelongsToMany {
return $this->belongsToMany(UserComment::class, 'user_history', 'user_id', 'history_id')->where('user_history.history_type', 'comment');
}
/**
* Get all of the actions that are associated with this user.
*/
public function actions() : BelongsToMany {
return $this->belongsToMany(UserAction::class, 'user_history', 'user_id', 'history_id')->where('user_history.history_type', 'action');
}
My aim is to be able to get each history type separately when I need it, but then be able to get all of the users history together, as a combined history trail of everything the user has done in the order it was done, so I can loop through and print out a history log.
At the moment the only way I can think of is by getting each of the relationships, merging the collections and sorting by created_at DESC, which is working fine, but in a perfect world, I would like to make 1 relationship (maybe polymorphic?) that just gets the actions and comments pivots together as 1 big collection.
As far as i'm aware, I cant UNION in the database as the tables have different column counts (and I need all the data from each table).
Is there a way to do this neatly using relationships to get the database to do the legwork, rather than having to get the relationships separately and merge/sort them?
Going forward there will be more pivot relationships like user_photos, user_emails, etc, so 1 neat way to get them all would be perfect!

Answer 1

Whenever you need interact with a pivot table, you can create a pivot model and use it as a normal model, or you can write a DB statement that will get the data. I like the model way better.
class UserHistory extends Pivot
{
// since Pivot extends Model
// this just a normal model
// with Pivot specific stuff.
}
DB statement can be something like this:
DB::select('select * from user_history');