Where NOT in pivot table

Question

In Laravel we can setup relationships like so:

class User {
    public function items()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Item');
    }
}

Allowing us to to get all items in a pivot table for a user:

Auth::user()->items();

However what if I want to get the opposite of that. And get all items the user DOES NOT have yet. So NOT in the pivot table.

Is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

For simplicity and symmetry you could create a new method in the User model:

// User model
public function availableItems()
{
    $ids = \DB::table('item_user')->where('user_id', '=', $this->id)->lists('user_id');
    return \Item::whereNotIn('id', $ids)->get();
}

To use call:

Auth::user()->availableItems();