Eloquent Relationships in Laravel (Complete Overview)

Eloquent ORM makes working with database relationships easy. It allows you to define relationships in models and access related data without writing complex SQL joins.

Why Are Relationships Used?

Imagine a blog system:

Each User writes many Posts
Each Post can have many Comments
Each Comment belongs to one User

You could:

Query data more easily
Automatically fetch related data
Update/delete linked records using cascade
Represent complex business logic in a clean object-oriented way

Benefits of Using Relationships

Feature	Purpose
Data Integrity	Keeps your foreign keys valid.
Easier Queries	Easily fetch related data with joins or lazy loading.
Object-Oriented Access	Work with objects instead of manual foreign key logic.
Cascade Operations	Save/delete related records automatically.

Relationship Types

Relationship Type	Description	Tables Involved	Example Table Design
One To One (`hasOne`, `belongsTo`)	Each employee has one profile.	profiles,employees	profiles.id, employees.profile_id
One To Many (`hasMany`)	A post can have many comments.	posts,comments	comments.post_id
Many To One (`belongsTo`)	A comment belongs to a post (reverse of OneToMany).	comments,posts	comments.post_id
Many To Many (`belongsToMany`)	Students can enroll in many courses, and courses can have many students.	students, courses, course_student	course_student.student_id, course_student.course_id
Has One Through	A manager has one profile through employee.	managers,employees, profiles	employees.manager_id, profiles.employee_id
Has Many Through	A manager has many projects through employees.	managers,employees, projects	employees.manager_id, projects.employee_id
Polymorphic One To One	A profile can have one image; same table can store images for other models too.	images, profiles	images.imageable_id, images.imageable_type
Polymorphic One To Many	A post or video can have many comments (shared table).	comments, posts & videos	comments.commentable_id, comments.commentable_type
Polymorphic Many To Many	A tag can belong to many posts or videos, and posts/videos can have many tags.	tags, posts, videos, taggables	taggables.tag_id, taggables.taggable_id, taggables.taggable_type

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