Retrieving data from referenced key table - Laravel-4 - database

Question

The structure of concerning tables is as follows (MySQL):
//Table Name : team
tid PK
team_name (varchar)
//Table Name : fixture
fid PK
home_team_id FK |_ both referenced to 'tid' from 'team' table
away_team_id FK |
My aim is to retrieve the team names. Considering this structure, I think I'll have to retrieve home_team_id and away_team_id and then do something like
Fixture::where('tid','=',$home_team_id)->get();
My question is, is this the correct way to accomplish what I aim to do?
and
should this be done from the controller? (if so, then I'll have to do two queries from same function)

Answer 1

First, rather than having your primary keys be tid and fid, just keep them both as id. This is not only best practice, but will allow you to more easily use Laravel's Eloquent ORM as it by default assumes your primary key column is named id.
Second thing, make sure your table names are in plural form. Although this is not necessary, the example I'm about to give is using Laravel defaults, and Laravel assumes they are in plural form.
Anyway, once you've 'Laravelized' your database, you can use an Eloquent model to setup awesome relationships with very minimal work. Here's what I think you'd want to do.
app/models/Team.php
class Team extends Eloquent {
// Yes, this can be empty. It just needs to be declared.
}
app/models/Fixture.php
class Fixture extends Eloquent {
public function homeTeam()
{
return $this->belongsTo('Team', 'home_team_id');
}
public function awayTeam()
{
return $this->belongsTo('Team', 'away_team_id');
}
}
Above, we created a simple model Team which Laravel will automatically look for in the teams database table.
Second, we created model Fixture which again, Laravel will use the fixtures table for. In this model, we specified two relationships. The belongsTo relationship takes two parameters, what model it is related to, in both cases here they are teams, and what the column name is.
Laravel will automatically take the value in away_team_id and search it against the id column in your teams table.
With just this minimal amount of code, you can then do things like this.
$fixture = Fixture::find(1); // Retrieves the fixture with and id of 1.
$awayTeam = $fixture->awayTeam()->first(); // var_dump this to see what you get.
$homeTeam = $fixutre->homeTeam()->first();
Then you can proceed as normal and access the column names for the tables. So say you have a 'name' column in the teams table. You can echo out the the home team name from the fixture like so.
$fixture = Fixture::find(1); // Get the fixture.
echo $fixture->homeTeam->name;
It's nearly 2AM, so there might be an error or two above, but it should work.
Make sure you check the docs for Eloquent, especially the bits relating to relationships. Remember to name your columns and tables in the way Laravel wants you to. If you don't, there are ways to specify your custom names.
If you want to get even more fancy, you can define the inverse relationship like this on your Team model.
app/models/Team.php
class Team extends Eloquent {
public function fixturesAtHome()
{
return $this->hasMany('Fixture', 'home_team_id');
}
public function fixturesAway()
{
return $this->hasMany('Fixture', 'away_team_id');
}
}
Then to get all of a particular team's home fixtures...
$team = Team::find(1); // Retreive team with id of 1;
$homeFixtures = $team->fixturesAtHome();