Laravel hasMany not returning collection

Question

I am building the middleware for permissions. Permissions are based on either user action types and/or module/element type (ie delete button).

The model ActionPermission (table action_permission ) has all the permission types while table users__action_permission is the pivot for User & ActionPermission with all users and their permission IDs.

User

has a permissions() method that gets all the permissions for user

public function permissions()
{
    return $this->hasMany('App\ActionPermission');
}

checkUserPermissions (middleware)

public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
        $response = $next($request);
        $userId = Auth::id();
        $userPermissions = User::findOrFail($userId)->permissions()->get();
        dd($userPermissions);
}

Since permissions() is looking for user_id key, and ActionPermission model (table action_permission ) does not have the relevant user_id key, I need the table users__action_permission which holds he user_id .

My question is if Laravel has a way for User::permissions() to access users__action_permission table, or do I need to build a model for that?

Answer 1

You do not need a model for the pivot table.

in User model add

public function ActionPermissions() {
    return $this->belongsToMany('App\User', 'users_action_permission');
}

in Action Permission model add

public function Users() {
    return $this->belongsToMany('App\ActionPermission', 'users_action_permission');
}