Laravel pivot tables n:m relationships

Question

I have table organisations and another table clients. An organisation can have many clients, and a client can belong to many organisations hence the many-to-many relationship and the pivot table client_organisation.

In my model Organisation.php I have the following,

class Organisation extends Eloquent {

    //Organisation __has_many__ clients
    public function clients()
    {
        return $this->hasMany('client');
    }

}

and in my Client.php model I have,

class Client extends Eloquent {

    public function organisations()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('organisation');
    }

}

The Pivot table migration,

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;

class CreateClientOrganisationTable extends Migration {

    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('client_organisation', function(Blueprint $table)
        {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->integer('client_id')->unsigned()->index();
            $table->foreign('client_id')->references('id')->on('clients')->onDelete('cascade');
            $table->integer('organisation_id')->unsigned()->index();
            $table->foreign('organisation_id')->references('id')->on('organisations')->onDelete('cascade');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }


    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::drop('client_organisation');
    }

}

I then run the following in my controller, to retrieve all the organisations and there clients,

$organisations = new Organisation;  
$organisations->clients()->get();

however this results in the following error,

SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'clients.organisation_id' in 'where clause' (SQL: select * from clients where clients.organisation_id is null)

Now it is my understanding that should not need a clients.organisation_id column in my database as I have a pivot table, what am I doing wrong? I want to be able to get all my organisations and their clients, using the pivot table.

Answer 1

To use a pivot table, you should use belongsToMany on both ends of the relationship:

class Organisation extends Eloquent {

    public function clients()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Client');
    }

}

class Client extends Eloquent {

    public function organisations()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Organisation');
    }

}

Note that the first argument to belongsToMany is the name of the class, which is capitalized.