Laravel follower/following relationships - php

Question

I am trying to make a simple follower/following system in laravel, nothing special, just click a button to follow or unfollow, and display the followers or the people following you.
My trouble is I can't figure out how to make the relationships between the models.
These are the migrations:
-User migration:
Schema::create('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->timestamps();
$table->string('email');
$table->string('first_name');
$table->string('last_name');
$table->string('password');
$table->string('gender');
$table->date('dob');
$table->rememberToken();
});
-Followers migration:
Schema::create('followers', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->integer('follower_id')->unsigned();
$table->integer('following_id')->unsigned();
$table->timestamps();
});
}
And here are the models:
-User model:
class User extends Model implements Authenticatable
{
use \Illuminate\Auth\Authenticatable;
public function posts()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\Post');
}
public function followers()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\Followers');
}
}
-And the followers model is basically empty, this is where I got stuck
I tried something like this:
class Followers extends Model
{
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\User');
}
}
but it didn't work.
Also, I'd like to ask if you could tell me how to write the "follow" and "display followers/following" functions. I've read every tutorial I could find but to no use. I can't seem to understand.

Answer 1

You need to realize that the "follower" is also a App\User. So you only need one model App\User with these two methods:
// users that are followed by this user
public function following() {
return $this->belongsToMany(User::class, 'followers', 'follower_id', 'following_id');
}
// users that follow this user
public function followers() {
return $this->belongsToMany(User::class, 'followers', 'following_id', 'follower_id');
}
User $a wants to follow user $b:
$a->following()->attach($b);
User $a wants to stop following user $b:
$a->following()->detach($b);
Get all followers of user $a:
$a_followers = $a->followers()->get();