Laravel Eloquent load relationship of the pivot

Question

In my website I have User, Roles and Permissions.

Each user belongs to many Roles (eg. User.php) and pivot table called 'role_user'

public function roles()
{
    return $this->belongsToMany(Role::class);
}

and each Role belongs to many Permissions (eg. Role.php) and pivot table called 'permission_role'

public function permissions()
{
    return $this->belongsToMany(Permission::class);
}

I want to somehow access the User permission but I can't seem to figure it out. Basically I need something like this on the User.php

public function permissions()
{
    return $this->roles()->permissions();
}

Is this possible? Please help. Thank you.

Look into eager loading. You’ll be able to access nested relationships using the dot notation. — Adam Rodriguez, Nov 12 '18 at 01:58
@adam, I already tried that but it doesn't work. Could you please provide a working example? — Daniel R., Nov 14 '18 at 20:40
Try `User::with(['roles', 'roles.permissions'])->find($youruserid);` — Adam Rodriguez, Nov 15 '18 at 18:49
@adam, i tried that, but it returns the names of the users... so it isn't working... I made — Daniel R., Nov 17 '18 at 19:53
if you don't want the names of the users use a select clause `select('column1', 'column2'...` — Adam Rodriguez, Nov 17 '18 at 21:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 12 '18 at 01:47

Laravel has no native support for a direct relationship.

I created a package for this case: https://github.com/staudenmeir/eloquent-has-many-deep

You can use it like this:

class User extends Model {
    use \Staudenmeir\EloquentHasManyDeep\HasRelationships;

    public function permissions() {
        return $this->hasManyDeep(
            Permission::class, ['role_user', Role::class, 'permission_role']
        );
    }
}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 18 '19 at 14:22

If you are using your results in JSON format, this should be very easy if you implement Eloquent Resources

Define three resources as follows:

(Note: to easily define a resource like below, do:

php artisan make:resource UserRes

Then modify the toArray function as you desire. )

UserRes

<?php

namespace App\Http\Resources;

use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;

class UserRes extends JsonResource
{
    /**
     * Transform the resource into an array.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @return array
     */
    public function toArray($request)
    {
        $user = parent::toArray($request);
        $user["roles"] = RolesRes::collection($this->roles);
        return $user;
    }
}

RolesRes

<?php

namespace App\Http\Resources;

use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;

class RolesRes extends JsonResource
{
    /**
     * Transform the resource into an array.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @return array
     */
    public function toArray($request)
    {
        $res =  parent::toArray($request);
        $res["permissions"] = $this->permissions;
        return $res;
    }
}

PermissionsRes:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Resources;

use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;

class PermissionsRes extends JsonResource
{
    /**
     * Transform the resource into an array.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @return array
     */
    public function toArray($request)
    {
        $perm = parent::toArray($request);
        return $perm;
    }
}

In my app, here is a screenshot of a sample of results when fetching a single user. Take note of the nesting of multiple roles under which are multiple permissions. Screenshot of a JSON response when querying a single user

Laravel Eloquent load relationship of the pivot

2 Answers2