Laravel many-to-many relation with custom table names and IDs

Question

Hello so I have many to many relation between Question [table name: tblquestion, id: que_id] and Agecategory [table name: tblagecategory, id: aca_id]. They have shared table named QuestionAgecategory [table name: tblquestionagecategory, id: qac_id].

I want to note that all the IDS and table names are custom named and not according to typical Laravel syntax.

And I am trying to relate them in Laravel. So far it returns null when I try to look $question->agecategories;

$question->agecategories; => null

But it has records in it and returns this after $question = App\Question::find(1);

$question = App\Question::find(1); => App\Question {#2901 que_id: 1, que_name: "hello",

Question model

class Question extends Model
{
    protected $table = 'tblquestion';
    protected $primaryKey = 'que_id';
    protected $keyType = 'integer'; 
    public $incrementing = true;
    public $timestamps = false;

    public function agecategories() 
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('App\Agecategory');
    }
}

Agecategory model

class Agecategory extends Model
{
    protected $table = 'tblagecategory';
    protected $primaryKey = 'aca_id';
    protected $keyType = 'integer'; 
    public $incrementing = true;

    public function questions() 
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('App\Question');
    }
}

QuestionAgecategory model

class QuestionAgecategory extends Model
{
    protected $table = 'tblquestionagecategory';
    protected $primaryKey = 'qac_id';
    protected $keyType = 'integer'; 
    public $incrementing = true;
}

Migrations

      Schema::create('tblquestion', function (Blueprint $table) {
          $table->increments('que_id');
          $table->string('que_name', 128);
      });


      Schema::create('tblagecategory', function (Blueprint $table) {
          $table->increments('aca_id');
          $table->timestamps();
      });

      Schema::create('tblquestionagecategory', function (Blueprint $table) {
          $table->increments('qac_id');
          $table->integer('qac_que_id')->unsigned();
          $table->integer('qac_aca_id')->unsigned();
          $table->foreign('qac_que_id')->references('que_id')->on('tblquestion');
          $table->foreign('qac_aca_id')->references('aca_id')->on('tblagecategory');
      });

Answer 1

You are using custom columns and custom database naming.

Your Belongs to many is expecting a pivot table tblquestion_tblagecategory which does not exist. As the previos answer stated, you should change your belongsToMany to search for the custom tables and columns.

https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/eloquent-relationships#many-to-many

Change to this in your question Model

public function agecategories() 
{
    return $this->belongsToMany('App\Agecategory', 'tblquestionagecategory', 'qac_que_id', 'qac_aca_id');
}

And also, in your other Agecategory Model

public function questions() 
{
    return $this->belongsToMany('App\Question', 'tblquestionagecategory', 'qac_aca_id', 'qac_que_id');
}