Friendship system with Laravel : Many to Many relationship

Question

I\'m trying to create a Friendship system with Laravel (I\'m starting with it) but I\'m blocked with relationships. Here\'s the thing : there is one table Users and one tabl

Answer 1

It's oviously a problem in your DB and also definition of the relation. Many-to-Many relation type expects you to use and intermediate table. Here's what you have to do :

1. Create a user_friend (id, user_id, friend_id) table in your schema.
2. Remove unnecessary fields from user and friend tables.
3. Create proper foreign keys . user.id-> user_friend.user_id , friend.id -> user_friend.friend_id
4. Better define full relation on the User and Friend models,

for example :

 class User extends Eloquent {
    function friends()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('User', 'user_friend', 'user_id', 'friend_id');
    }
}

You can read much more in Laravel docs, HERE