Pivot models $table variable not respected / overridden

[shortontech]

Pivot models $table variable not respected / overridden

[github-actions]

Thank you for reporting this issue!

As Laravel is an open source project, we rely on the community to help us diagnose and fix issues as it is not possible to research and fix every issue reported to us via GitHub.

If possible, please make a pull request fixing the issue you have described, along with corresponding tests. All pull requests are promptly reviewed by the Laravel team.

Thank you!

[driesvints]

Could you maybe try the solution from this issue? #48277

[edwwaarrdd]

Hey @driesvints I started work on a possible fix but unsure if it's the right way to go forward.
I left it as a draft for now as the ->attach() works as expected but the get functionality is still broken. :(

[driesvints]

Thanks @edwwaarrdd. To be very honest, often when Pivot models are stretched like this we recommend to just use a dedicated eloquent model. I'm not sure if we should do any major changes.

[staudenmeir]

@shortontech @edwwaarrdd This is a very fundamental issue that can't be solved (without dirty hacks):
Calling $this->belongsToMany(Category::class) already creates the relationship's base query and so applying ->using() afterwards doesn't change the pivot table anymore.

There is an undocumented behavior, in that you can pass a Pivot instance to the $table parameter, which does not run into this issue, but the name of the variable gives no hint at this behavior (and is undocumented).

I agree that the solution should be documented, as this topic comes up regularly.

[edwwaarrdd]

@staudenmeir Yes I agree with this. Started tinkering a little bit but it became clear pretty fast that it's not something easy to fix.

So @shortontech if you want to fix your issue instead of declaring your belongs to many like this:

public function categories()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Category::class)->using(CardCategory::class);
    }

You can write it this way:

public function categories()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Category::class, CardCategory::class);
    }

And it will work the same as ->using() but the $table variable will be respected as it calls the using() function in the construct of the belongsToMany class.

I am going to close my PR

Thanks for the quick responses @driesvints & @staudenmeir

[driesvints]

Yeah I think we should as well. Thanks @staudenmeir. Would appreciate a PR to the docs if possible!

[edwwaarrdd]

Added a small extra section for it in the docs.