In this episode, we dive into handling intermediate table (pivot table) columns in many-to-many relationships. If you ever wondered how to store extra information on the connection between two models (like which version of a topic is used in a course), this is for you.
We start out by explaining the scenario: maybe you've got a course
and a topic
, and you want to also record the version of the topic for each course (like Laravel 9 for one course and Laravel 5 for another). To do this, we walk through updating the database schema: adding a new version
column to the pivot table via migration and making sure we handle nullable versions too.
After setting up the database, we look at the code changes needed to work with this new data. That means tweaking the model relationships, seeing how to attach extra attributes (like version
) when relating the models, and making sure it's passed properly into the database. We also show how to make sure this new pivot data appears when you fetch topics for a course.
And of course, it wouldn't be complete without updating the UI! We hook up the form, add a field to input the version, and demonstrate storing and displaying this extra info in the browser. Finally, we test the whole thing: attaching topics with and without versions, and adding some conditional logic in the template to show version info only if it exists.
By the end, you'll know how to handle extra fields on your pivot tables, making your many-to-many relationships a lot more flexible!