Handling relationship in model in laravel - php

Question

I am learning relationships in Laravel php framework and I am trying to build this query
SELECT * FROM users u INNER JOIN link_to_stores lts ON u.id=lts.user_id INNER JOIN stores s ON lts.store_id=s.store_id WHERE lts.privilege = 'Owner'
I built this in Model
Link_to_store.php
public function store()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\Store');
}
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\User');
}
User.php
public function store_links()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\Link_to_store');
}
Store.php
public function user_links()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\Link_to_store');
}
I tried this query but this only joins user and link_to_store table
$personal_stores = Auth::user()->store_links->where('privilege','=','Owner');
Now I am confused how to join store table too. Can anyone help with this?
Schema is like this
Stores Table
store_id store_name
Users Table
id name
Link_to_stores Table
id store_id user_id privilege

Answer 1

I suppose store_links is actually a pivot table. In this case, you can use belongsToMany(), this will automatically take care of the pivot table.
To do this, in your User model you change the store function to this:
function stores() {
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Store', 'store_links', 'user_id', 'store_id')->withPivot('privilege');
}
Because the primary key of stores is not id, you will have to define this in you Store model with the following line:
protected $primaryKey = 'store_id';
Now to get the stores for a user, you simply call
$stores = Auth::user->stores()->wherePivot('privilege', 'Owner')->get();

Answer 2

I am learning relationships in Laravel php framework and I am trying to build this query
SELECT * FROM users u INNER JOIN link_to_stores lts ON u.id=lts.user_id INNER JOIN stores s ON lts.store_id=s.store_id WHERE lts.privilege = 'Owner'
You are trying to do a join here. You can do a join like this:
$stores = User::join('link_to_stores as lts', 'users.id', '=', 'lts.user_id')->join('stores as s', 'lts.store_id', '=', 's.id')->where('lts.privilege', 'Owner')->get();
But like Jerodev pointed out, it seems like Many to Many relationship might make more sense in your case. The difference is that relationship will actually execute 2 queries (1 for original model, 1 for relationship). It will then attach the related models to the original model (which is extremely handy).