Laravel Eloquent Model many-to-many or one-to-many

Question

I'm a little bit confused after reading Laravel Eloquent Model documentation. So I have this database structure:

task
   id
   name
   description

tag
   id
   name

task_tag
   id
   task_id
   tag_id

One task may has zero, one or many tags. Of course one tag may has connection to zero, one or many tasks.

I tried this, but not sure:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Task extends Model {
    public function tags() {
        return $this->hasMany('App\Tag');
    }
}

hasMany() is the best solution in this case or I need to use something else?

Answer 1

What you're describing sounds like a typical many-to-many relationship (including the pivot table you've outlined). hasMany() is intended to be used in One To Many relationships. For Many To Many, you should use belongsToMany() . So your Task model would look like:

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Task extends Model
{
    public function tags()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('App\Tag');
    }
}

Relevant docs .