Model Inheritance in Laravel

Question

i\'m currently working with Laravel and I\'m struggling with the fact that every model needs to extend from Eloquent and I\'m not sure how to implement a model Hierarchy

Answer 1

I found a bug (feature?) where Laravel 5 looks up the incorrect class if ParentClass and ChildClass have the same $table string. So if you call ParentClass::all() in certain situations it can return ChildClass instances in the collection!!

The Alpha's answer led me to a workaround where you create the following class structure:

abstract class BaseClass extends BaseModel
{
    // ParentClass member variables and functions go here, to be shared between parent and child classes
}

class ParentClass extends BaseClass
{
    protected $table = 'your_table';

    // place no other member variables or functions in this class
}

class ChildClass extends BaseClass
{
    protected $table = 'your_table';

    // ChildClass member variables and functions go here
}

This seems to force Laravel to do the correct lookup when you call ParentClass::all() or ChildClass::all() since their common ancestor doesn't have a table declared. Just treat BaseObject as ParentObject and that way you don't have to muddy your inheritance concept with database details that shouldn't be relevant. I have not stress-tested this thoroughly yet, so be sure to note the reason for this class's existence in your code for future debugging breadcrumbs.