Defining and Using Many-to-Many Relationships in Laravel Eloquent

Laravel's Eloquent ORM supports many-to-many relationships, which link two models through an intermediate table (e.g., users , roles , role_user ).

In the User model you define a roles() method that returns $this->belongsToMany('App\\Role') ; similarly, the Role model defines a users() method that returns $this->belongsToMany('App\\User') .

belongsToMany('App\\Role');
    }
}
?>

belongsToMany('App\\User');
    }
}
?>

After defining the relationship you can retrieve related records via the dynamic property $user->roles and chain query constraints such as $user->roles()->orderBy('name')->get() or filter by pivot columns with wherePivot('approved', 1) and wherePivotIn('priority', [1,2]) .

The intermediate table can be customized by passing its name and foreign key columns to belongsToMany , for example $this->belongsToMany('App\\Role', 'role_user', 'user_id', 'role_id') . Additional pivot columns can be accessed using withPivot('column1', 'column2') , and timestamps can be automatically maintained with withTimestamps() .

You may rename the pivot accessor with as('subscription') and retrieve it as $podcast->subscription , allowing more expressive code when the pivot represents a specific concept.

For advanced scenarios you can define a custom pivot model by chaining using('App\\UserRole') on the relationship; the custom model must extend Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\Pivot and can contain additional logic or attributes.