How to deal with multiple authors in one paper using laravel? - php

Question

So I am having troubles on how to implement multiple authors in one paper and how to separate authors to be used for citations of a paper.
currently I have my input like this
<div class="group">
<input class="inputchecker2 inputInfo" id="inputID" type="text" name="Authors" required>
<span class="highlight"></span>
<span class="bar"></span>
<label class="infoLabel">Author(s)</label>
</div>
where name="Authors" is stored like this in the controller
$paper=new Papers();
$paper->Authors=$request->Authors;
The problem arises once there are multiple authors in one paper and I don't know how to implement that and make it work I tried making another table for it but I got stuck in thinking of the Logic
my migration files is as follows:
PAPERS TABLE
public function up()
{
Schema::create('papers', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id('PaperID');
$table->string('PaperTitle');
$table->string('PaperType');
$table->string('Authors');
$table->string('College')->nullable();
$table->string('file');
$table->date('DatePublished')->nullable();
$table->unsignedBigInteger('UploaderUserID');
$table->foreign('UploaderUserID')->references('UserID')->on('users');
$table->timestamps();
});
}
AUTHORS TABLE
public function up()
{
Schema::create('paper_authors', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id('PaperAuthorID');
$table->unsignedBigInteger('paper_ID');
$table->foreign('paper_ID')->references('PaperID')->on('papers');
$table->string('AuthorName');
$table->unsignedBigInteger('user_ID');
$table->foreign('user_ID')->references('UserID')->on('users');
$table->timestamps();
});
}
Are there ways in simplifying this to make it easier for me to understand?

Answer 1

Your approach is kind of wrong from the start,
A paper can belong to multiple authors
An author can have multiple papers.
In your paper model, you should have this
public function authors(){
return $this->belongsTo(Author::class);
}
In your author model, you should have this
public function papers(){
return $this->belongsTo(Paper::class);
}
Your Paper migration should look like this
public function up()
{
Schema::create('author_papers', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id();
$table->unsignedBigInteger('author_id');
$table->foreign('user_id')->references('user_id')->on('users');
$table->string('title');
$table->string('type');
$table->string('college')->nullable();
$table->string('file');
$table->date('date_published')->nullable();
$table->timestamps();
});
}
Please note that I have changed some of the table columns to the Laravel convention (lowercase, snake_case instead of camelCase), the same will be done will the authors' table. I changed PaperIdD to id, I changed the table name to author_papers too. I made a lot of changes, check them and do what works for you. The important thing is to add author_id to the table
public function up()
{
Schema::create('authors', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id('id');
$table->unsignedBigInteger('user_id');
$table->foreign('user_ID')->references('UserID')->on('users');
$table->string('name');
$table->timestamps();
});
}
You don't need to add the paper id here, as one author can have many papers.
The last thing, a plus actually, when creating a new paper, you will need to send a list of all the authors to the HTML blade. So, the part the user will enter the author name will now be Select and not input again.
Best of success