What is the right Laravel class name for a given table name?

Question

If I have database table suggestions_votes, what would be the correct name of Laravel (5.1) Class (SuggestionsVote or SuggestionVote)?

Table was created by migration, using

Schema::create('suggestions_votes', ...

Answer 1

Laravel recommends certain conventions, but they also provide you with options to override them.

If your model is "SuggestionVote", then the table associated with that model will be the snake case plural name of the class. In other words, it would look for the table "suggestion_votes". If you want to override the associated table name, you can add this property to your model:

protected $table = 'suggestions_votes';

If you are actually creating a pivot table for the models "Suggestion" and "Vote", then Laravel will by convention join the two related model names in alphabetical order. In other words, it will look for the pivot table "suggestion_vote". You can override this though when you define the relationship. For example:

return $this->belongsToMany('App\Suggestion', 'suggestions_votes');

Where 'App\Suggestion' would be fully namespaced path to your Suggestion class.