Laravel 5 Polymorphic Relationship

Question

Not entirely clear on this yet as it would be the first time I'm tinkering with this. My table structure is as follows:

questions
- id
- type_id

multiple_choice_options
- id
- question_id

drag_and_drop_options
- id
- question_id

The type_id field on the questions table determines which options table to load from. So essentially I'd like to setup a relationship on the Question model as follows:

class Question extends Model {
    public function options() {
        // not sure what to return here?
    }
}

And for the option models would this be the correct inverse definition?

class MultipleChoiceOption extends Model {
    public function question() {
        return $this->belongsTo(Question::class);
    }
}

class DragAndDropOptions extends Model {
    public function question() {
        return $this->belongsTo(Question::class);
    }
}

How do I set this up to work with polymorphic relationships?

Answer 1

You could simply build a switch in the options() relation:

class Question extends Model {
    public function options() {
        if ($type_id === 'multiple') {
            return $this->hasMany(MultipleChoiceOption::class);
        } else {
            return $this->hasMany(DragAndDropOptions::class);
        }
    }
}

Careful though with these magic relations, you'll need additional type checks and careful coding in your app.