Download the PHP package staudenmeir/laravel-adjacency-list without Composer

Laravel Adjacency List

This Laravel Eloquent extension provides recursive relationships for trees and graphs using common table expressions (CTE).

Compatibility

• MySQL 8.0+
• MariaDB 10.2+
• PostgreSQL 9.4+
• SQLite 3.8.3+
• SQL Server 2008+
• SingleStore 8.1+ (only trees)
• Firebird

Installation

composer require staudenmeir/laravel-adjacency-list:"^1.0"

Use this command if you are in PowerShell on Windows (e.g. in VS Code):

composer require staudenmeir/laravel-adjacency-list:"^^^^1.0"

Versions

Usage

The package offers recursive relationships for traversing two types of data structures:

• Trees: One Parent per Node (One-to-Many)
• Graphs: Multiple Parents per Node (Many-to-Many)

Trees: One Parent per Node (One-to-Many)

Use the package to traverse a tree structure with one parent per node. Use cases might be recursive categories, a page hierarchy or nested comments.

Supports Laravel 5.5+.

• Getting Started
• Included Relationships
• Trees
• Filters
• Order
• Depth
• Path
• Custom Paths
• Nested Results
• Initial & Recursive Query Constraints
• Additional Methods
• Custom Relationships
• Deep Relationship Concatenation
• Known Issues

Getting Started

Consider the following table schema for hierarchical data in trees:

Use the HasRecursiveRelationships trait in your model to work with recursive relationships:

By default, the trait expects a parent key named parent_id. You can customize it by overriding getParentKeyName():

By default, the trait uses the model's primary key as the local key. You can customize it by overriding getLocalKeyName():

Included Relationships

The trait provides various relationships:

• ancestors(): The model's recursive parents.
• ancestorsAndSelf(): The model's recursive parents and itself.
• bloodline(): The model's ancestors, descendants and itself.
• children(): The model's direct children.
• childrenAndSelf(): The model's direct children and itself.
• descendants(): The model's recursive children.
• descendantsAndSelf(): The model's recursive children and itself.
• parent(): The model's direct parent.
• parentAndSelf(): The model's direct parent and itself.
• rootAncestor(): The model's topmost parent.
• rootAncestorOrSelf(): The model's topmost parent or itself.
• siblings(): The parent's other children.
• siblingsAndSelf(): All the parent's children.

Trees

The trait provides the tree() query scope to get all models, beginning at the root(s):

treeOf() allows you to query trees with custom constraints for the root model(s). Consider a table with multiple separate lists:

You can also pass a maximum depth:

You can also chaperone tree relationships to load ancestors and parent relationships already present in the tree to (potentially) reduce N+1 queries:

Or with toTree():

Filters

The trait provides query scopes to filter models by their position in the tree:

• hasChildren(): Models with children.
• hasParent(): Models with a parent.
• isLeaf()/doesntHaveChildren(): Models without children.
• isRoot(): Models without a parent.

Order

The trait provides query scopes to order models breadth-first or depth-first:

• breadthFirst(): Get siblings before children.
• depthFirst(): Get children before siblings.

Depth

The results of ancestor, bloodline, descendant and tree queries include an additional depth column.

It contains the model's depth relative to the query's parent. The depth is positive for descendants and negative for ancestors:

Change the column name by overriding getDepthName() if your table already contains a depth column:

Depth Constraints

You can use the whereDepth() query scope to filter models by their relative depth:

Queries with whereDepth() constraints that limit the maximum depth still build the entire (sub)tree internally. Use withMaxDepth() to set a maximum depth that improves query performance by only building the requested section of the tree:

This also works with negative depths (where it's technically a minimum):

Path

The results of ancestor, bloodline, descendant and tree queries include an additional path column.

It contains the dot-separated path of local keys from the query's parent to the model:

Change the column name by overriding getPathName() if your table already contains a path column:

You can also customize the path separator by overriding getPathSeparator():

Custom Paths

You can add custom path columns to the query results:

You can also reverse custom paths:

Nested Results

Use the toTree() method on a result collection to generate a nested tree:

This recursively sets children relationships:

Initial & Recursive Query Constraints

You can add custom constraints to the CTE's initial and recursive query. Consider a query where you want to traverse a tree while skipping inactive users and their descendants:

You can also add a custom constraint to only the initial or recursive query using withInitialQueryConstraint()/ withRecursiveQueryConstraint().

Additional Methods

The trait also provides methods to check relationships between models:

• isChildOf(Model $model): Checks if the current model is a child of the given model.
• isParentOf(Model $model): Checks if the current model is a parent of the given model.
• getDepthRelatedTo(Model $model): Returns the depth of the current model related to the given model.

Custom Relationships

You can also define custom relationships to retrieve related models recursively.

• HasManyOfDescendants
• BelongsToManyOfDescendants
• MorphToManyOfDescendants
• MorphedByManyOfDescendants
• Intermediate Scopes
• Usage outside of Laravel

HasManyOfDescendants

Consider a HasMany relationship between User and Post:

Define a HasManyOfDescendants relationship to get all posts of a user and its descendants:

Use hasManyOfDescendants() to only get the descendants' posts:

BelongsToManyOfDescendants

Consider a BelongsToMany relationship between User and Role:

Define a BelongsToManyOfDescendants relationship to get all roles of a user and its descendants:

Use belongsToManyOfDescendants() to only get the descendants' roles:

MorphToManyOfDescendants

Consider a MorphToMany relationship between User and Tag:

Define a MorphToManyOfDescendants relationship to get all tags of a user and its descendants:

Use morphToManyOfDescendants() to only get the descendants' tags:

MorphedByManyOfDescendants

Consider a MorphedByMany relationship between Category and Post:

Define a MorphedByManyOfDescendants relationship to get all posts of a category and its descendants:

Use morphedByManyOfDescendants() to only get the descendants' posts:

Intermediate Scopes

You can adjust the descendants query (e.g. child users) by adding or removing intermediate scopes:

Usage outside of Laravel

If you are using the package outside of Laravel or have disabled package discovery for staudenmeir/laravel-cte, you need to add support for common table expressions to the related model:

Deep Relationship Concatenation

You can include recursive relationships into deep relationships by concatenating them with other relationships using staudenmeir/eloquent-has-many-deep. This works with Ancestors, Bloodline and Descendants relationships (Laravel 9+).

Consider a HasMany relationship between User and Post and building a deep relationship to get all posts of a user's descendants:

User → descendants → User → has many → Post

Install the additional package, add the HasRelationships trait to the recursive model and define a deep relationship:

At the moment, recursive relationships can only be at the beginning of deep relationships:

• Supported: User → descendants → User → has many → Post
• Not supported: Post → belongs to → User → descendants → User

Known Issues

MariaDB doesn't yet support correlated CTEs in subqueries. This affects queries like User::whereHas('descendants') or User::withCount('descendants').

Graphs: Multiple Parents per Node (Many-to-Many)

You can also use the package to traverse graphs with multiple parents per node that are defined in a pivot table. Use cases might be a bill of materials (BOM) or a family tree.

Supports Laravel 9+.

• Getting Started
• Included Relationships
• Pivot Columns
• Cycle Detection
• Subgraphs
• Order
• Depth
• Path
• Custom Paths
• Nested Results
• Initial & Recursive Query Constraints
• Deep Relationship Concatenation
• Known Issues

Getting Started

Consider the following table schema for storing directed graphs as nodes and edges:

Use the HasGraphRelationships trait in your model to work with graph relationships and specify the name of the pivot table:

By default, the trait expects a parent key named parent_id and child key named child_id in the pivot table. You can customize them by overriding getParentKeyName() and getChildKeyName():

By default, the trait uses the model's primary key as the local key. You can customize it by overriding getLocalKeyName():

Included Relationships

The trait provides various relationships:

• ancestors(): The node's recursive parents.
• ancestorsAndSelf(): The node's recursive parents and itself.
• children(): The node's direct children.
• childrenAndSelf(): The node's direct children and itself.
• descendants(): The node's recursive children.
• descendantsAndSelf(): The node's recursive children and itself.
• parents(): The node's direct parents.
• parentsAndSelf(): The node's direct parents and itself.

Pivot Columns

Similar to BelongsToMany relationships, you can retrieve additional columns from the pivot table besides the parent and child key:

Cycle Detection

Subgraphs

The trait provides the subgraph() query scope to get the subgraph of a custom constraint:

You can pass a maximum depth as the second argument:

Order

The trait provides query scopes to order nodes breadth-first or depth-first:

• breadthFirst(): Get siblings before children.
• depthFirst(): Get children before siblings.

Depth

The results of ancestor, descendant and subgraph queries include an additional depth column.

It contains the node's depth relative to the query's parent. The depth is positive for descendants and negative for ancestors:

Change the column name by overriding getDepthName() if your table already contains a depth column:

Depth Constraints

You can use the whereDepth() query scope to filter nodes by their relative depth:

Queries with whereDepth() constraints that limit the maximum depth still build the entire (sub)graph internally. Use withMaxDepth() to set a maximum depth that improves query performance by only building the requested section of the graph:

This also works with negative depths (where it's technically a minimum):

Path

The results of ancestor, descendant and subgraph queries include an additional path column.

It contains the dot-separated path of local keys from the query's parent to the node:

Change the column name by overriding getPathName() if your table already contains a path column:

You can also customize the path separator by overriding getPathSeparator():

Custom Paths

You can add custom path columns to the query results:

You can also reverse custom paths:

Nested Results

Use the toTree() method on a result collection to generate a nested tree:

This recursively sets children relationships:

Initial & Recursive Query Constraints

You can add custom constraints to the CTE's initial and recursive query. Consider a query where you want to traverse a node's descendants while skipping inactive nodes and their descendants:

You can also add a custom constraint to only the initial or recursive query using withInitialQueryConstraint()/ withRecursiveQueryConstraint().

Deep Relationship Concatenation

You can include recursive relationships into deep relationships by concatenating them with other relationships using staudenmeir/eloquent-has-many-deep (Laravel 9+).

Consider a HasMany relationship between Node and Post and building a deep relationship to get all posts of a node's descendants:

Node → descendants → Node → has many → Post

Install the additional package, add the HasRelationships trait to the recursive model and define a deep relationship:

At the moment, recursive relationships can only be at the beginning of deep relationships:

• Supported: Node → descendants → Node → has many → Post
• Not supported: Post → belongs to → Node → descendants → Node

Known Issues

MariaDB doesn't yet support correlated CTEs in subqueries. This affects queries like Node::whereHas('descendants') or Node::withCount('descendants').

Package Conflicts

• staudenmeir/eloquent-param-limit-fix: Replace both packages with staudenmeir/eloquent-param-limit-fix-x-laravel-adjacency-list to use them on the same model.

Contributing

Please see CODE OF CONDUCT for details.