How to join tables in Laravel? - php

Question

I am new to Laravel, I have a question regarding Eloquent:
This is my DB table structure:
users
- id
- user_id
- username
- name
- email
- password
- email_verified_at
- remember_tok
- created_at
- updated_at
challenges
- id
- challenge_id
- category_id
- hashtag
- title
- description
- duration
- link
- created_at
- updated_at
- user_id
user_challenges
- user_id
- challenge_id
- duration
- created_at
- updated_at
What I want to achieve is to display the user's challenges, so for example, if a user joins a challenge in the user dashboard I want to display the challenges that he joined, but also the challenges that the user has created (if he has created any);
Models\User.php
class User extends Authenticatable
{
use Notifiable;
public function challenges() {
return $this->hasMany(Challenge::class, 'user_id');
}
public function userChallenges() {
return $this->hasMany(UserChallenge::class, 'user_id');
}
}
Models\Challenge.php
class Challenge extends Model
{
public function user () {
return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'user_id');
}
}
Models\UserChallenge.php
class UserChallenge extends Model
{
public function user () {
return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'user_id');
}
}
This is what I have in my Home Controller:
App\Http\Controllers\HomeController.php
class HomeController extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
$user_id = auth()->id();
$user = User::find($user_id);
return view('home')
->with('challenges', $user->challenges)
->with('userChallenges', $user->userChallenges);
}
}
This is what I get currently for the "Joined Challenges" in My Dashboard - but how can I join the tables when returning the view so I can also get the challenge hashtag title? Like I get above under "My Challenges" section?
Dashboard
UPDATE:
What should I add to my database so I can count the number of users that have joined the challenge?

Answer 1

To get user created challenges, I believe you are already doing it correctly.
And to get user joined challenges. You almost get it right with your pivot table. You can have look on many-to-many relationship in laravel documentation.
These are the sample code to retrieve challenges created by a user and challenges joined by a user. These code should reside in your User Model, you should keep the model.
public function created_challenges()
{
return $this->hasMany(Challenge::class,'user_id','id');
}
public function joined_challenges()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Challenges::class, 'user_challenges', 'user_id', 'challenges_id');
}
Once you get the relationship working right, you can simply use the collection returned from the relationship. Once you pass the $user->joined_challenges to your view, you can do as below
#foreach ($joined_challenges as $challenge)
<p>{{$challenge->hashtag}}</p>
<p>{{$challenge->title}}</p>
#endforeach
Let me know it this works, cheers! ;)