In my site (api using laravel 5.6 and laravel passport) I have two types of users (Teachers and Students), in the future there will be more. The teacher and student entities are very different, meaning that if I keep them all in one table, the table will be long and many fields will have a null value. Right now I have one Users table with common fields and two other tables (Teachers and Students) to which I have setup a polymorphic relationship from user. My question is if this is a good approach, or if there are other ways to handle this more elegantly?
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It usually good to not have a bunch of null values in a table. So any time you find yourself having multiple null values, it usually means you need to break that table up.Devon Bessemer– Devon Bessemer2018-04-07 16:59:56 +00:00Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 16:59
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What solution did you choose?Andy White– Andy White2018-08-08 02:39:51 +00:00Commented Aug 8, 2018 at 2:39
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I would create 1 table for Teachers and 1 table for Students and not use the Users table/model. This way you can keep them completely separate and not worry about adding more types of users in the future. Continually trying to fit new users into your existing Users model, which would be shared, is a headache. I made this same mistake when I started and eventually had to rework the project.
There are plenty of guides for Laravel multi-auth / multi-user online. Here are a couple to help you get started:
- https://medium.com/hello-laravel/multiple-authentication-system-laravel-5-4-ac94c759638a
- https://www.codementor.io/okoroaforchukwuemeka/9-tips-to-set-up-multiple-authentication-in-laravel-ak3gtwjvt
Also, there are cases where it makes sense to use the User model for multiple types of users. For example, you may have multiple roles for a user where most/all of the fields are the same (not your scenario). In this case, you can assign a 'role' to each User and the check the roles for actions (e.g. add middleware to prevent roles from accessing various routes). Here is an example:
Since you said the teacher and student entities are very different, you should keep them separate.
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