Kohana/PHP - Defining ORM relationship for the 'favorites' table - php

Question

I have 3 tables in the following format.
users
id
FirstName
LastName
userjobs
id
jobinfo
starredjobs
id
user_id
userjob_id
comments
enddate
The 'starredjobs' table holds all the jobs which an user starred/added to favorites.
I have defined the following relationships in their respective model files.
user.php
protected $_has_many = array( 'starredjobs' => array('model' => 'starredjobs' , 'foreign_key'=>'user_id'),
starredjob.php
protected $_belongs_to = array('user' => array('model' => 'user','foreign_key' => 'user_id'));
protected $_has_many = array('jobs' => array('model'=> 'userjob', 'foreign_key'=> 'job_id'));
userjobs.php
none
The idea is to retrieve all the starred jobs and details regarding jobs from the user object. A user can 'n' number of jobs and A job can be starred by 'n' number of users.
Am i defining relationships correctly?

Answer 1

Short answer: No. What you have here is a typical n:m relationship which can easily be used in Kohana using has_many "through" (as is used in the default roles users-relationship). But this doesn't allow for extra attributes in the "middle" table, so you need to use 2 has_many with corresponding belongs_to.
This can be described in plain English like so:
One user has many starredjobs.
One job has many starredjobs.
One starredjob belongs to one user and one job
Also consider the difference between far_key and foreign_key (official doc sadly doesn't cover it), but one easy rule to remember: The key in the other table is far away -> it is the far_key.
This would give you the following
user.php
$_has_many = array(
'starredjobs' => array(
'model' => 'Starredjob',
'far_key' => 'user_id'
)
);
userjob.php
$_has_many = array(
'starredbyuser' => array(
'model' => 'Starredjob',
'far_key' => 'userjob_id'
)
);
starredjob.php
$_belongs_to = array(
'user' => array(
'model' => 'User',
'foreign_key' => 'user_id'
),
'job' => array(
'model' => 'Userjob',
'foreign_key' => 'userjob_id'
)
);
Now you can do various things such as:
//get all jobs starred by given $user
foreach ($user->starredjobs->find_all() as $starredjob) {
//info on userjob via $starredjob->job->jobinfo, etc.
//info from pivot table via $starredjob->comments, etc.
}
//get all users that starred a given $userjob
foreach ($userjob->starredbyuser->find_all() as $starredjob) {
//info on user via $starredjob->user->FirstName, etc.
//info from pivot table via $starredjob->comments, etc.
}