Laravel 4: Get all product attributes with relationship table

Question

I've got the following tables:

products (
    id
)

attributes (
    id
    name
    value
)

products_attributes (
    product_id,
    attribute_id
)

And I need to be able to query for all of the attributes of a specific product. I tried doing this with the FLUENT QUERY BUILDER but I'm getting lost in my own code.

Can someone help me out with an example?

Answer 1

Usually you would create models for both of your entities, in which you can specify the relationships:

class Product extends Eloquent
{
    protected $table = 'products';

    public function attributes()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Attribute', 'products_attributes');
    }
}

class Attribute extends Eloquent
{
    protected $table = 'attributes';

    public function products()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Product', 'products_attributes');
    }
}

The belongsToMany() method sets up a many-to-many relationship. The first parameter specifies the related model class name, the second one the name of the database table that holds the connections between the two entities.

To find a product with ID 1234, you would fetch it like this:

$product = Product::find(1234);

You can then magically access all of its attributes like this:

$attributes = $product->attributes;

For more information, you can refer to the documentation.