Referencing to another model in Laravel - php

Question

Just finished my "friends" system in Laravel (5.4) for a projet I'm working on. I call them "connections" in my case. Everything is working fine and I'm now trying to clean everything a little bit.
From the very beginning, following tutorials and SO answers, I put every method in my User model (which is not that bad: a connection is related to a user). But I'd like to clean and put everything related to my connections into a model named Connection.
Does the User model should handle everything related to connections, or my cleaning wish makes sense and a Connection model is legit?
How to achieve that regarding the code below? How to reference to User now I'm not inside the class anymore and $this becoming pointless?
Connection model
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
class Connection extends Authenticatable
{
const PENDING = 0;
const ACCEPTED = 1;
const REJECTED = 2;
}
User model
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
class User extends Authenticatable
{
// Get connections the user initiated by himself
public function connectionsOfOwner() {
return $this->belongsToMany(User::class, 'connections', 'user_id', 'connection_id')->withPivot('status');
}
// Get connections the user has been invited to
public function connectionsOf() {
return $this->belongsToMany(User::class, 'connections', 'connection_id', 'user_id')->withPivot('status');
}
// Accessor allowing to call $this->connections
public function getConnectionsAttribute() {
if (!array_key_exists('connections', $this->relations)) {
$this->loadConnections();
}
return $this->getRelation('connections');
}
// Check if a Laravel relation named "connection" exists
protected function loadConnections() {
if (!array_key_exists('connections', $this->relations)) {
$this->setRelation('connections', $this->mergeConnections());
}
}
// Merge "connectionsOfOwner" and "connectionsOf"
protected function mergeConnections() {
return $this->connectionsOfOwner->merge($this->connectionsOf);
}
// Get pending connections
public function getPendingConnections() {
$filtered = $this->connections->filter(function ($value, $key) {
if ($value->pivot->status == 0) {
return $value;
}
});
return $filtered;
}
// Get accepted connections
public function getAcceptedConnections() {
$filtered = $this->connections->filter(function ($value, $key) {
if ($value->pivot->status == 1) {
return $value;
}
});
return $filtered;
}
// Add a connection
public function addConnection($user) {
$this->connectionsOfOwner()->attach($user->id);
}
// Accept a connection
public function acceptConnection($user) {
$this->connectionsOf()->syncWithoutDetaching([$user->id => ['status' => Connection::ACCEPTED]]);
$this->connectionsOfOwner()->attach($user->id, ['status' => Connection::ACCEPTED]);
}
// Remove a connection
public function removeConnection($user) {
$this->connectionsOfOwner()->detach($user->id);
$this->connectionsOf()->detach($user->id);
}
}

Answer 1

Possibly you could skip the Connection Model and keep that functionality in a trait "HasConnections" that you use in th User model.
Jeffrey Way briefly talks about this approach in Laracon2017: https://streamacon.com/video/laracon-us-2017/day-2-jeffrey-way
Good luck!