Laravel 4.1 WhereIn w/ Many to Many Relation and Conditionals? - php

Question

I am working on an application where part of it needs to search through a number of different fields on the same model with AND - AKA find age whereBetween $from and $to AND where gender is $gender. Where I am getting lost is this model has a many to many relationship with Category and I need to filter by category in the same query. I am trying to do this in one query because it needs to be pretty fast.
Here is what I have so far:
$categories = Input::get('categories');
$query = Program::with('categories')->whereIn('category', $categories)->query();
if ($ages = Input::get('ages')) {
$query->whereBetween('age',array($from,$to));
}
if ($gender = Input::get('gender')) {
$query->where('gender','like', $gender);
}
// Executes the query and fetches it's results
$programs = $query->get();
I have put this together from so many different sources that I would like to know if this even works, or if it is the most efficient method possible. There is of course a table programs, a table categories, and a table program_category with columns id, program_id, and category_id.
Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

So, in the end figured it out:
$query = Program::whereHas('categories', function($q) use ($categories)
{
$q->whereIn('categories.id', $categories);
});
'categories' is the name of the relationship function on my Program model. $categories is my array of category ids. Thanks again for your help.

Answer 2

This will work if fields are available in the right table as you queried for and you may write it like this:
$categories = Input::get('categories');
$query = Program::with('categories')->whereIn('category', $categories);
// declare $from and $to if not available in the current scope
if ($ages = Input::get('ages')) $query->whereBetween('age', array($from,$to));
if ($gender = Input::get('gender')) $query->where('gender', $gender);
// Executes the query and fetches it's results
$programs = $query->get();