Laravel 4: Eloquent and relationships - php

Question

I'm having troubles to setup the right Eloquent relationships (belongsTo, hasMany, ...) for a pivot table.
I will abbreviate code for clarity.
I have two important tables: 'parties' and 'p2p_relations'.
This is the migration for parties
public function up()
{
Schema::create('parties', function ($table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->string('name');
$table->unsignedInteger('kind');
$table->timestamps();
$table->softDeletes();
$table->foreign('kind')->references('id')->on('kinds');
});
}
This is the migration for p2p_relations (party to party relations)
public function up()
{
Schema::create('p2p_relations', function ($table) {
$table->bigIncrements('id');
$table->unsignedInteger('context');
$table->unsignedInteger('reference');
$table->datetime('start');
$table->datetime('end')->nullable();
$table->unsignedInteger('kind')->nullable();
$table->timestamps();
$table->softDeletes();
$table->foreign('context')->references('id')->on('parties');
$table->foreign('reference')->references('id')->on('parties');
$table->foreign('kind')->references('id')->on('kinds');
});
}
The model for Party
class Party extends Ardent
{
use SoftDeletingTrait;
protected $softDelete = true;
protected $dates = ['created_at', 'updated_at', 'deleted_at'];
protected $table = 'parties';
public static $rules = array(
'name' => 'required',
'kind' => 'required|numeric'
);
}
The model for Relation
class Relation extends Ardent
{
use SoftDeletingTrait;
protected $softDelete = true;
protected $dates = ['created_at', 'updated_at', 'deleted_at'];
protected $table = 'p2p_relations';
public static $rules = array(
'context' => 'required|numeric',
'reference' => 'required|numeric',
'kind' => 'required|numeric',
'start' => 'required|date',
'end' => 'date'
);
}
How can I set relationships so I can associate parties as context or reference in a relationship.
I thought belongsTo will help like so in class Relation
public function context() {
return $this->belongsTo('Party', 'context', 'id');
}
public function reference() {
return $this->belongsTo('Party', 'reference', 'id');
}
But when I run this unit-test I get an error: Undefined property: Relation::$context
$context = new Party();
$context->name = 'Person A';
$context->kind = 1;
$context->save();
$ref = new Party();
$ref->name = 'Company B';
$ref->kind = 2;
$ref->save();
$relation = new Relation();
$relation->start = new DateTime();
$relation->context()->associate($context);
$relation->reference()->associate($ref);
$relation->kind = 3;
$relation->save();
Any thoughts? I'm really a newbie to this framework.

Answer 1

Thanks to the comments provided I've learned a lot :-)
Updated my Party Model:
public function references() {
return $this->belongsToMany('Party', 'p2p_relations', 'context', 'reference')
->withPivot('reference', 'start', 'kind')
->withTimestamps() ;
}
No Relation model needed.
The pivot table works perfectly.
Thanks