Has Many Through

The HasManyThrough relationship allows you define an indirect relationship between two models. For example: Users have posts and users belongs to a country, hence you should be able to find posts for a country via user.

Relationship models

Continuing with the users, countries and posts. You will have to define following three models.

import User from 'App/Models/User'
import Post from 'App/Models/Post'

import {
  column,
  BaseModel,
  hasManyThrough,
  HasManyThrough,
} from '@ioc:Adonis/Lucid/Orm'

export default class Country extends BaseModel {
  @hasManyThrough([() => Post, () => User])
  public posts: HasManyThrough<typeof Post>
}

• The hasManyThrough decorator needs a total of two models.
• The first model represents the values to fetch.
• The second model works as a bridge for the through relationship to work.

The User model must have the countryId foreign key.

import { column, BaseModel } from '@ioc:Adonis/Lucid/Orm'

export default class User extends BaseModel {
  @column()
  public countryId: number
}

The Post model must have the userId foreign key.

import { column, BaseModel } from '@ioc:Adonis/Lucid/Orm'

export default class Post extends BaseModel {
  @column()
  public userId: number
}

Relationship keys

A many to many through relation relies on many different keys to properly setup the relationship. All of these are keys are computed using standard conventions. However, you are free to override them.

localKey

The local key is mostly the primary key of the first model. In our example: Country is the first model and localKey will be the id.

foreignKey

The foreign key is in the pivot table to create the relationship with the first model. Conventionally, it is snake_case representation of the model name and its primary key. In our example: The foreignKey will be country_id.

throughLocalKey

The related foreign key is in the pivot table to create the relationship with the related model. Conventionally, it is snake_case representation of the model name and its primary key. In our example: The throughLocalKey will be id.

throughForeignKey

The through foreign key is mostly the foreign key of the related model. In our example: Skill is the related model and throughForeignKey will also be the user_id.

@manyToMany([() => Post, () => User], {
  localKey: 'id',
  foreignKey: 'country_id',
  throughLocalKey: 'id',
  throughForeignKey: 'user_id'
})
public posts: HasManyThrough<typeof Post>

Table Structure

Following is an example table describing the relationship at the database level. As you can notice, there is no direct relationship between countries and posts. However, the users table will work as a bridge for same.

Preloading relationship

The preloading API for a has many through relationship is already covered in the introduction guide.

Persisting relationship

There is no persistence API for has many through relationship. You must use direct relationships for inserting and updating values.