Extending Eloquent Models in Laravel (use different tables)

Question

I’m building a Laravel application that involves tracking different types of leads. For example, there are Refinance leads and Purchase leads.

Since the leads share a lot of information and functionality, but not all, my thinking was to create a Lead class, which extends Laravel’s Model class, and then a RefinanceLead class, which extends the Lead class.

So I’d have:

class Lead extends Model
{
    // shared lead stuff
}

class RefinanceLead extends Lead
{
    // stuff specific to refinance leads
}

My questions are:

1. Does this strategy make sense?
2. If it does, how is Eloquent going to handle the data? Will I have a leads table and a refinance_leads table?
3. Will a new instance of the RefinanceLead class utilize anything in the leads table?

I’ve had trouble answering this question via the documentation, but if I missed where this is explained, please let me know. Thanks.

Answer 1

1. Yes, it makes perfect sense to have all the common functionality in a parent model.

2. Basically each Eloquent model will handle the data from its own table defined in the protected $table variable. You can override the parent variable to set a separate table for all the different child models. Laravel Table Names

For example if you use the getId() method on a RefinanceLead instance it will return the id from refinance_lead table. If you use it on a PurchadeLead instance it will retirn the id from purchade_table

class Lead extends Model
{
    public function getId() {
       return $this->id;
    }
}

class RefinanceLead extends Lead
{
     protected $table = 'refinance_leads';
}

class PurchaseLead extends Lead
{
    protected $table = 'purchase_leads';
}

3. I don't know what are your exact needs, but in general I'll suggest making the Lead class abstract and so you don't associate a table for it. Use it only to separate common functionality, relations, etc... Of course as it was suggested in the comments, implementing an interface is always a good idea.

abstract class Lead extends Model implements LeadContract
{
   // class body
}