Laravel: Does every table need a model?

Question

I am building an occasion system with Laravel. I have several tables like:

• occasions
• occasion_categories (cars, trikes and other)

Now i have a model called Occasion which represents the table occasions, it also has a foreign key to the occasion_categories table.

I want to retrieve all occasion categories, but

• do i need to make a seperated model called OccasionCategory for the occasion_categories and define all relations in these models,

• or can i just make a method in the Occasion class like getCategories() and then use the DB class like DB::table('occasion_categories')->get() to retrieve all possible categories?

Answer 1

Updated on 4th Oct, 2019:

In short, NO, you can use Query Builder instead of Eloquent ORM but if you want to use Eloquent ORM then each table has to be bound to a model. Also, a model is not necessarily has to be an Eloquent model, you can create a model without extending eloquent model which may or may not use database. A model doesn't mean a database access layer but... anyways, it's another big topic.

Original Answer:

Actually you need to create two Eloquent models for both of your tables if you are using Eloquent, for example:

class Occasion extend Eloquent {
    // Laravel will look for occasions table for Occasion model so following line
    // is optional if you don't want to use another table name for Occation model
    protected $table = 'occasions';

    // Now declare the relationship with "occasion_categories" table
    public function occasionCategory()
    {
        // Make sure you have used occasion_categories_id as the foreugn key
        return $this->belongsTo('OccasionCategory', 'occasion_categories_id', 'id');
    }
}

Now create the OccasionCategory model:

class OccasionCategory extend Eloquent {

    protected $table = 'occasion_categories';

    // Now declare the relationship with "occasion_categories" table
    public function occasions()
    {
        // Make sure you have used occasion_categories_id as the foreign key
        return $this->hasMany('Occasion', 'occasion_categories_id', 'id');
    }
}

Now you may retrieve the occasions with it's parent occasions_category using something like this:

// Use the Occasion model
$allOccasionsWithCategory = Occasion::with('occasionCategory')->get();

// Find one Occasion whose id is 1 with OccasionCategory
$oneOccasionsWithCategory = Occasion::with('occasionCategory')->find(1);

// You may use this to get the related occasionCategory model
$occasionCategory = $oneOccasionsWithCategory->occasionCategory;

// Use the OccasionCategory model
$allOccasionsWithCategory = OccasionCategory::with('occasions')->get();

// Find one OccasionCategory whose id is 1 with Occasion
$oneOccasionsWithCategory = OccasionCategory::with('occasions')->find(1);

// You may use this to get all the related occasions model
$occasions = $oneOccasionsWithCategory->occasions;

Read more about relationship on Laravel website.

If you use Query Builder directly then you may use something like this (without a model):

// All occations
$occations = DB::table('occations')->get();

// All occasions and related occasion_categories
$occationsAndCategories = DB::table('occations')
                            ->join('occasion_categories', 'occasions.occasion_category_id', '=', 'occasion_categories.id')
                            ->get();

Read more about Query Builder on Laravel website.