How is a pivot table created by Laravel?

Question

In Laravel 4, when working with many-to-many relationships as described in the 4.2 docs, how can I actually get Laravel to create the pivot table for me?

Do I need

Answer 1

For Many to Many relationships you can create the Migration file of the Database manually like this:

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;

class CreateAccountTagTable extends Migration
{

    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('account_tag', function (Blueprint $table) {
            // $table->timestamps(); // not required
            // $table->softDeletes(); // not required

            $table->integer('account_id')->unsigned();
            $table->foreign('account_id')->references('id')->on('accounts');

            $table->integer('tag_id')->unsigned()->nullable();
            $table->foreign('tag_id')->references('id')->on('tags');
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::drop('account_tag');
    }
}

Note: in case you have timestamps on the pivot table you must set withTimestamps on the relationship of both ends like this:

return $this->belongsToMany(\Mega\Modules\Account\Models\Tag::class)->withTimestamps();

.

return $this->belongsToMany(\Mega\Modules\Account\Models\Account::class)->withTimestamps();