How can I implement single table inheritance using Laravel's Eloquent?

Question

Currently I have a model class named Post.

class Post extends Eloquent {

    protected $table = 'posts';
    protected $fillable = array('user_id', 'title', 'description', 'views');

    /*
     * Relationships
     */

    public function user()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo('User');
    }

    public function tags()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Tag', 'post_tags');
    }

    public function reactions()
    {
        return $this->hasMany('Reaction');
    }

    public function votes()
    {
        return $this->hasMany('PostVote');
    }

    //Scopes and functions...
}

I would like to divide posts into two different types; articles and questions. I thought the best way to do this is by inheritance, so Article and Question would extend Post. What is the best way to do this and where to start?

Answer 1

Before I dig into multi table inheritance I want to lose a few words about single table inheritance. Single table inheritance is the more easy way when it comes to inheritance with db models.
You have multiple models bound to the same table and a type column to distinguish between the different model classes. However the reason you normally want to implement inheritance is because the models have shared properties but also some that are unique to the model.
When using single table inheritance your table looks similar to that at some point:

id   shared_column   question_column   article_column   question_column2   article_column2 etc...
1    Lorem           62                NULL             test               NULL
2    Ipsum           NULL              x                NULL               true

You end up having a lot of NULL values because there are columns not needed for a certain type of model. And with a lot of records this can influence the size of database.

However for some cases it might still be the best solution. Here's a well written Tutorial that shows how to implement it in Laravel in a pretty elegant way.

Multi Table Inheritance

Now lets look at multi table inheritance. With this method you split your single table into multiple ones (well I guess the name gave that kind of away already ;)) We are going to use a technique called Polymorphism

Our schema from the example above would look like this:

posts table:

id   shared_column  postable_id  postable_type
1    Lorem          1            Question
2    Ipsum          1            Article


questions table:

id   question_column   question_column2
1    62                test


articles table:

id   article_column   article_column2
1    x                true

A lot cleaner if you ask me...

The interesting columns here are postable_id and postable_type. The type tells us on which table we will find our "rest" of the model and the id specifies the primary key of the record that belongs to it. Note that the column names could be whatever you want, but it is convention to call it "-able".

Lets take a look at the Eloquent models now.

Post

class Post extends Eloquent {
    // all your existing code
    
    public function postable(){
        return $this->morphTo();
    }
}

Question / Article / every other postable type

class Question extends Post {
    public function post(){
        return $this->morphOne('Post', 'postable');
    }
}

Note that you actually don't have to extend from Post but you can if you maybe have methods that you want to use too. Anyways, the polymorphic relationship will work with or without it.

Ok that's the basic setup. Here's how you can use your new models:

Retrieve all posts

$posts = Post::all();

Retrieve all questions

$questions = Question::all();

Get question columns from a post

$post = Post::find(1);
$question_column2 = $post->postable->question_column2;

Get post properties from question

$question = Question::find(1);
$shared_column = $question->post->shared_column;

Check which type a post is

$post = Post::find(1);
echo 'type: '.get_class($post->postable);
if($post->postable instanceof Question){
    // Looks like we got a question here
}

Create new question

Now bear with me, creating a model is a bit more complicated. If you have to do it at multiple places in your application I suggest you write a reusable function for it.

// create a record in the questions and posts table

$question = new Question();
$question->question_column = 'test';
$question->save();

$post = new Post();
$post->shared_column = 'New Question Post';
$post->save();

// link them together

$question->post()->save($post);

So as you can see, a clean database comes with it's price. It will be a bit more complex to handle your model. However you can put all these extra logic (e.g. that's required to create a model) into a function in your model class and don't worry about it too much.

Also, there's a nice Tutorial for multi table inheritance with laravel too. Maybe it helps ;)