👀 Views: 1453 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-07-11

laravel eloquent many-to-many PHP

I'm converting an old project and I'm updating my dependencies and I'm updating my dependencies and I'm working on a Laravel 9 project where I need to implement a many-to-many relationship between `User` and `Role` models using a custom pivot table called `role_user`... I've set up my models like this: ```php class User extends Model { public function roles() { return $this->belongsToMany(Role::class, 'role_user'); } } class Role extends Model { public function users() { return $this->belongsToMany(User::class, 'role_user'); } } ``` The pivot table is structured with `user_id`, `role_id`, and a `created_at` timestamp. However, when I'm trying to attach roles to a user, the following behavior occurs: `SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1048 Column 'user_id' want to be null` I've double-checked that the user does exist in the database and I'm executing the attach method like this: ```php $user = User::find(1); $user->roles()->attach(1); ``` I also checked that the `role_user` table is correctly set up with the necessary foreign keys. When I debugged the `User` object before calling `attach`, it seems to be returning correctly. I have also attempted to use `sync` instead of `attach`, but get the same behavior. I even tried clearing the cache using `php artisan cache:clear` just in case there was something amiss there. Is there something I'm overlooking, or a best practice I've missed regarding attaching records to a custom pivot table in Laravel? Any guidance would be highly appreciated. Is there a better approach? I'm coming from a different tech stack and learning Php. I'm open to any suggestions. I'm developing on CentOS with Php.