Laravel - Database, Table and Column Naming Conventions?

Question

I'm using laravel eloquent data objects to access my data, what is the best way to name my tables, columns, foreign/primary keys etc?

I found, there are lots of naming conventions out there. I'm just wondering which one best suits for laravel eloquent models.

I'm thinking of following naming convention:

1. Singular table names (ex: Post)
2. Singular column names (ex: userId - user id in the post table)
3. Camel casing for multiple words in table names (ex: PostComment, PostReview, PostPhoto)
4. Camel casing for multiple words in column names (ex: firstName, postCategoryId, postPhotoId)

So with this, I could use similar syntax in the controller.

$result = Post::where('postCategoryId', '4')->get(); 

Are there any recommended Laravel guidelines for this? Can I proceed with these naming conventions?

If someone has better suggestions, I will be very happy to hear them.Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Laravel has its own naming convention. For example, if your model name is User.php then Laravel expects class 'User' to be inside that file. It also expects users table for User model. However, you can override this convention by defining a table property on your model like,

    class User extends Eloquent implements UserInterface, RemindableInterface {         protected $table = 'user';     } 

From Laravel official documentation:

Note that we did not tell Eloquent which table to use for our User model. The lower-case, plural name of the class will be used as the table name unless another name is explicitly specified. So, in this case, Eloquent will assume the User model stores records in the users table. You may specify a custom table by defining a $table property on your model

If you will use user table id in another table as a foreign key then, it should be snake-case like user_id so that it can be used automatically in case of relation. Again, you can override this convention by specifying additional arguments in relationship function. For example,

    class User extends Eloquent implements UserInterface, RemindableInterface {         public function post(){             return $this->hasMany('Post', 'userId', 'id');         }     }      class Post extends Eloquent{         public function user(){             return $this->belongsTo('User', 'userId', 'id');         }        } 

Docs for Laravel eloquent relationship

For other columns in table, you can name them as you like.

I suggest you to go through documentation once.