Migration for creating join table - php

Question

There's a table in my SQL DB called "projects" and it has a column in it "categories" which is a varchar(255) representation of a php array "['category_1', 'category_2', 'category_3']" and what i'd like to do is put these categories into a separate table which would be made of a unique integer id in addition to the name of the category and then use a join table to connect it to "projects" in a many-to-many relationship.
So it would be a migration that would perform the following:
Create a join table called "categories_projects"
Create a table called "categories" that would be comprised of just a unique id and the title of the category
Insert into the categories a row for each so "category_1", "category_2", "category_3"
Look for any existing rows in the "projects" table and based on the varchar(255) field "category" mentioned above, create a row in the join table that would connect it to its respective category.
What I have so far:
<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
class CreateCategoriesTable extends Migration
{
/**
* Run the migrations.
*
* #return void
*/
public function up()
{
Schema::create('categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->unsignedInteger('parent_id')->nullable();
$table->string('title');
$table->timestamps();
$table->softDeletes();
});
DB::table('categories')->insert(
[
'title' => 'category_1'
], [
'title' => 'category_2'
], [
'title' => 'category_3'
], [
'title' => 'category_4'
], [
'title' => 'category_5'
]
);
Schema::create('categories_projects', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->unsignedInteger('project_id');
$table->unsignedInteger('category_id');
$table->timestamps();
$table->softDeletes();
});
// This doesn't work but it's a representation of what I'm trying to do
// $categories = DB::rawQuery('select * from categories');
// foreach ($categories as $category) {
// $projects = DB::rawQuery('select * from projects where projects.category like %$category['title']');
// foreach($projects as $project) {
// DB::table(categories_projects)->insert(['project_id' => $project['id'], 'category_id' => $category['id']]);
// }
//
// }
}

Answer 1

Try this one:
If both sides of your categories name in your main table are surrounded by single quotes (such as 'category_1')
$categories = DB::rawQuery("select * from categories");
foreach ($categories as $category) {
$projects = DB::rawQuery("select * from projects where category like '%''" . $category["title"] . "''%' ");
foreach($projects as $project) {
DB::table('categories_projects')->insert(['project_id' => $project['id'], 'category_id' => $category['id']]);
}
}

Answer 2

This is what I ended up going with, it seems like I answered my own question in the process of asking it but anyways:
public function up()
{
Schema::dropIfExists('categories');
Schema::create('categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->string('title');
$table->timestamps();
$table->softDeletes();
});
DB::table('categories')->insert([
['title' => 'Addition'],
['title' => 'Bathrooms'],
['title' => 'Commercial'],
['title' => 'Community'],
['title' => 'Dental'],
['title' => 'Design & Construction'],
['title' => 'Facade'],
['title' => 'Home Design'],
['title' => 'Medical'],
['title' => 'Multi-Family'],
['title' => 'Office'],
['title' => 'Renovation'],
['title' => 'Residential'],
['title' => 'Restaurant'],
['title' => 'Retail'],
['title' => 'Student Housing']
]);
Schema::create('categories_projects', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->unsignedInteger('project_id');
$table->unsignedInteger('category_id');
$table->timestamps();
$table->softDeletes();
});
$categories = DB::table("categories")->get();
foreach ($categories as $category) {
$category_id = $category->id;
$projects = DB::table('projects')->where('categories', 'like', '%'.$category->title.'%')->get();
$category_proj = [];
foreach ($projects as $project) {
$project_id = $project->id;
$category_proj[] = ['project_id' => $project_id, 'category_id' => $category_id];
}
DB::table('categories_projects')->insert($category_proj);
}
}
/**
* Reverse the migrations.
*
* #return void
*/
public function down()
{
Schema::dropIfExists('categories_projects');
Schema::dropIfExists('categories');
}