🌳 Tree-like structure for Eloquent models

The package provides you with a simple solution that allows you to effortlessly create hierarchical structures for your Eloquent models. It leverages the materialized path pattern to represent the hierarchy of your data. It can be used for a wide range of use cases such as managing categories, nested comments, and more.

🔌 Installation

Install the package via Composer:

composer require nevadskiy/laravel-tree

✨ How it works

When working with hierarchical data structures in your application, storing the structure using a self-referencing parent_id column is a common approach.
While it works well for many use cases, it can become challenging when you need to make complex queries, such as finding all descendants of a given node. One of the simples and effective solutions is the materialized path pattern.

Materialized path

The "materialized pattern" involves storing the full path of each node in the hierarchy in a separate path column as a string. The ancestors of each node are represented by a series of IDs separated by a delimiter.

For example, the categories database table might look like this:

id	name	parent_id	path
1	Science	null	1
2	Physics	1	1.2
3	Mechanics	2	1.2.3
4	Thermodynamics	2	1.2.4

With this structure, you can easily retrieve all descendants of a node using a SQL query:

SELECT * FROM categories WHERE path LIKE '1.%'

PostgreSQL Ltree extension

Using the PostgreSQL ltree extension we can go even further. This extension provides an additional ltree column type designed specifically for this purpose. In combination with a GiST index it allows executing lightweight and performant queries across an entire tree.

Now the SQL query will look like this:

SELECT * FROM categories WHERE path ~ '1.*'

🔨 Configuration

All you have to do is to add a AsTree trait to the model and add a path column alongside the self-referencing parent_id column to the model's table.

Let's get started by configuring a Category model:

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Nevadskiy\Tree\AsTree;

class Category extends Model
{
    use AsTree;
}

Next, create a migration for the model. The definition of the path column depends on your database connection.

Using PostgreSQL database

To add a path column with the ltree type and a GiST index, use the following code:

$table->ltree('path')->nullable()->spatialIndex();

The complete migration file may look like this:

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

return new class extends Migration
{
    public function up(): void
    {
        Schema::create('categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('name');
            $table->ltree('path')->nullable()->spatialIndex();
            $table->timestamps();
        });

        Schema::table('categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->foreignId('parent_id')
                ->nullable()
                ->index()
                ->constrained('categories')
                ->cascadeOnDelete();
        });
    }

    public function down(): void
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('categories');
    }
};

Sometimes the Ltree extension may be disabled in PostgreSQL. To enable it, you can publish and run a package migration:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=pgsql-ltree-migration

Using MySQL database

To add a string path column with and an index, use the following code:

$table->string('path')->nullable()->index();

🚊 Usage

Once you have configured your model, the package automatically handles all manipulations with the path attribute based on the parent, so you do not need to set it manually.

Inserting models

To insert a root node, simply save the model to the database:

$root = new Category();
$root->name = 'Science';
$root->save();

To insert a child model, you only need to assign the parent_id attribute or use the parent or children relation:

$child = new Category;
$child->name = 'Physics';
$child->parent()->associate($root);
$child->save();

As you can see, it works just as regular Eloquent models.

Relations

The AsTree trait provides the following relations:

parent
children
ancestors (read-only)
descendants (read-only)

The parent and children relations use default Laravel BelongsTo and HasMany relation classes.

The ancestors and descendants can be used only in the "read" mode, which means methods like make or create are not available. So to save related nodes you need to use the parent or children relation.

Parent

The parent relation uses the default Eloquent BelongsTo relation class that needs the parent_id column as a foreign key. It allows getting a parent of the node.

echo $category->parent->name;

Children

The children relation uses a default Eloquent HasMany relation class and is a reverse relation to the parent. It allows getting all children of the node.

foreach ($category->children as $child) {
    echo $child->name;
}

Ancestors

The ancestors relation is a custom relation that works only in "read" mode. It allows getting all ancestors of the node (without the current node).

Using the attribute:

foreach ($category->ancestors as $ancestor) {
    echo $ancestor->name;
}

Using the query builder:

$ancestors = $category->ancestors()->get();

Getting a collection with the current node and its ancestors:

$hierarchy = $category->joinAncestors();

Descendants

The descendants relation is a custom relation that works only in "read" mode. It allows getting all descendants of the node (without the current node).

Using the attribute:

foreach ($category->descendants as $descendant) {
    echo $descendant->name;
}

Using the query builder:

$ancestors = $category->descendants()->get();

Querying models

Getting root nodes:

$roots = Category::query()->root()->get();

Getting nodes by the depth level:

$categories = Category::query()->whereDepth(3)->get();

Getting ancestors of the node (including the current node):

$ancestors = Category::query()->whereSelfOrAncestorOf($category)->get();

Getting descendants of the node (including the current node):

$descendants = Category::query()->whereSelfOrDescendantOf($category)->get();

Ordering nodes by depth:

$categories = Category::query()->orderByDepth()->get();
$categories = Category::query()->orderByDepthDesc()->get();

HasManyDeep

The package provides the HasManyDeep relation that can be used to link, for example, a Category model that uses the AsTree trait with a Product model.

That allows us to get products of a category and each of its descendants.

Here is the code example on how to use the HasManyDeep relation:

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Nevadskiy\Tree\AsTree;
use Nevadskiy\Tree\Relations\HasManyDeep;

class Category extends Model
{
    use AsTree;

    public function products(): HasManyDeep
    {
        return HasManyDeep::between($this, Product::class);
    }
}

Now you can get products:

$products = $category->products()->paginate(20);

Querying category products

You can easily get the products of a category and each of its descendants using a query builder.

1st way (recommended):

$products = Product::query()
    ->join('categories', function (JoinClause $join) {
        $join->on('products.category_id', 'categories.id');
    })
    ->whereSelfOrDescendantOf($category)
    ->paginate(24, ['products.*']);

2nd way (slower):

$products = Product::query()
    ->whereHas('category', function (Builder $query) use ($category) {
        $query->whereSelfOrDescendantOf($category);
    })
    ->paginate(24);

Moving nodes

When you move a node, the path column of the node and each of its descendants have to be updated as well. Fortunately, the package does this automatically using a single query every time it sees that the parent_id column has been updated.

So basically to move a node along with its subtree, you need to update the parent node of the current node:

$science = Category::query()->where('name', 'Science')->firstOrFail();
$physics = Category::query()->where('name', 'Physics')->firstOrFail();

$physics->parent()->associate($science);
$physics->save();

Other examples

Building a tree

To build a tree, we need to call the tree method on the NodeCollection:

$tree = Category::query()->orderBy('name')->get()->tree();

This method associates nodes using the children relation and returns only root nodes.

Building breadcrumbs

echo $category->joinAncestors()->reverse()->implode('name', ' > ');

Deleting a subtree

Delete the current node and all its descendants:

$category->newQuery()->whereSelfOrDescendantOf($category)->delete();

📚 Useful links

☕ Contributing

Thank you for considering contributing. Please see CONTRIBUTING for more information.

📜 License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see LICENSE for more information.