php 54 lines · 9 steps

Managing many-to-many tags in Laravel

A service class that syncs, features, and prunes post tags through Eloquent's belongsToMany pivot methods.

Explained by highlit

Laravel Intermediate many-to-many pivot-table collections eloquent data-normalization

1<?php
2 
3namespace App\Services;
4 
5use App\Models\Post;
6use App\Models\Tag;
7use Illuminate\Support\Str;
8use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
9 
10class PostTagManager
11{
12    public function applyTags(Post $post, array $names): array
13    {
14        $tagIds = collect($names)
15            ->map(fn (string $name) => trim($name))
16            ->filter()
17            ->unique()
18            ->map(function (string $name) {
19                return Tag::firstOrCreate(
20                    ['slug' => Str::slug($name)],
21                    ['name' => $name],
22                )->id;
23            });
24 
25        return $post->tags()->sync($tagIds);
26    }
27 
28    public function feature(Post $post, Tag $tag): void
29    {
30        $post->tags()->syncWithoutDetaching([
31            $tag->id => ['featured' => true],
32        ]);
33    }
34 
35    public function unfeature(Post $post, Tag $tag): void
36    {
37        $post->tags()->updateExistingPivot($tag->id, ['featured' => false]);
38    }
39 
40    public function toggle(Post $post, Tag $tag): array
41    {
42        return $post->tags()->toggle($tag->id);
43    }
44 
45    public function clearStale(Post $post): int
46    {
47        $staleIds = $post->tags()
48            ->wherePivot('created_at', '<', now()->subMonths(6))
49            ->wherePivot('featured', false)
50            ->pluck('tags.id');
51 
52        return $post->tags()->detach($staleIds);
53    }
54}

01 / 01

STEP 01

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Three takeaways

1Eloquent's belongsToMany relation exposes sync, toggle, and detach helpers so you rarely touch the pivot table by hand.
2firstOrCreate keyed on a slug keeps tags deduplicated even when the display name varies in casing or spacing.
3Pivot-aware queries like wherePivot let you filter and prune relationships by columns stored on the join table.

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