Laravel Eloquent multiple relationship in a football game schedule - php

Question

I am new to Laravel and Eloquent and i am trying to create a football game plan.
For now i have 4 tables (with some example entries):
teams (all teams)
+---------+-----------+
| team_id | team_name |
+---------+-----------+
| 1 | Arsenal |
| 2 | Chelsea |
+---------+-----------+
competition (all competitions)
+----------------+------------------+
| competition_id | competition_name |
+----------------+------------------+
| 1 | Premier League |
+----------------+------------------+
schedule (schedule to the competitions)
+----+----------------+----------+--------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+
| id | competition_id | matchday | home_team_id | away_team_id | home_goal | away_goal |
+----+----------------+----------+--------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
+----+----------------+----------+--------------+--------------+-----------+-----------+
schedule_teams (matches the schedule teamid with the teams id over the competition_id and the schedule_team_id)
+----+------------------+----------------+----------+
| id | schedule_team_id | competition_id | teams_id |
+----+------------------+----------------+----------+
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
+----+------------------+----------------+----------+
And here are my current classes:
Schedule.php
public function competition()
{
return $this->belongsTo(Competition::class, 'competition_id', 'competition_id');
}
Competition.php
public function schedule()
{
return $this->hasMany(Schedule::class, 'competition_id', 'competition_id');
}
With
$id = \request('competition_id');
$schedule = Schedule::where('competition_id', $id)->with('competition')->get();
i get the schedule with the home and away id's from schedule.
The question now is, how can i get the entries from the teams table over the schedule_teams table to a specifiy home and away id, also for example home_team_id = 1:
home_team_id (=1) -> schedule_team_id (=1) and competition_id (=1) -> teams (Arsenal)
I want the data from schedule and the associated teams in a collection to output in a blade.
can anyone help or give me improvement tips for a football database?

Answer 1

You should make use of the hasManyThrough relationship.
If you create say Schedule\Team, and then have that like the following.
public function schedule() {
$this->belongsTo(Schedule::class, 'schedule_id');
}
public function team() {
$this->belongsTo(Team::class, 'team_id');
}
Now in your Schedule class, you can have the following.
public function teams() {
$this->hasManyThrough(Team::class, Schedule\Team::class, 'schedule_id');
}
It should also be noted, that you don't need competition_id in your schedule team. Since a team belongs to a schedule, which belongs to competition, you can get it like that.
If you also want your Team to know about its schedules, you can add this to Team.
public function schedules() {
return $this->hasManyThrough(Schedule::class, Schedule\Team::class);
}
You Schedule\Team class becomes essentially, a glorified representation of a pivot table, but having it as a model, allows you to expand upon it in the future. It also helps keep everything neat.
Hope that makes sense.