Hi Nate,

I am currently using a hybrid of Nested Set Model and Adjacency List Model (parent_id), it works really well, although updates are pretty difficult when you're changing a node's parent, and get progressively slower as the size of your record-set increases, this model should be perfect for categories.

There are a couple of libraries I've seen for this, one specifically for Laravel, so if you're using Eloquent, it should be really easy to implement.

https://github.com/lazychaser/laravel4-nestedset

https://github.com/etrepat/baum/tree/master/src/Baum

I'm not using Eloquent, so have had to implement the Create/Update logic myself, if you need to go that way, post back and I'll help you out if I can.

Regards,

Andy

I have been looking for this the latest couple of days. This are my thoughts so far:

Nested sets. I looked at some of theese (baum) but I dont like the idea of having some root in the db that doesnt do anything but hold the hierarchy. When I tried multiple roots it was hard getting the whole tree. Maybe I'm missing something?

I also tried a selfrefencing Eloquent parent/children relationship, and it worked but then you dont know the depth, and I'm not sure how efficient it is.

Another option for me was using PostgreSQL which has some nice functions (tablefunc or the ltree datatype) for hierarchy. However I had a hard time getting the operators and functions work in Eloquent or Fluent. It complained that <@ wasnt a valid operator and such.

At the moment I'm trying out using a closure table with this package: https://github.com/franzose/ClosureTable and caching the result. I'm not done testing this yet... I hope it will work out.

I asked about this on laracasts.com the other day: https://laracasts.com/forum/1299-tree-structure-is-there-a-shortcut

I'm surprised how little information there are on this online and how complex it seems to accomplish in Laravel, where everything else seems so simple ;) After all, this must be a really common task in many applications?

Thank you both for the replies.

@Andy, I'm going to test out the lazychaser L4 Nested Set. It looks like what I'm looking for!

@mattiaswirft, Yeah I thought it was a common thing that people needed. In most CMS's and shopping carts that I've messed with, it seems easy to add an infinite amount of children categories - but when I start planning it into my own application, I suddenly am at a loss on the logistics of it. Seems most tutorials and explanations out there are geared toward CRUD and Testing. This is definitely on the backburner.

Baum https://github.com/etrepat/baum

Thanks zenry! That looks like a great option too. Documentation looks really nice.

NateLedet said:

Thanks zenry! That looks like a great option too. Documentation looks really nice.

I've released a v.2.0-beta of https://github.com/lazychaser/laravel4-nestedset, check it out! I've rewritten docs and got rid of some limitations.

pros/cons? baum / laravel4-nestedset?

Is there some basic tutorial for baum somewhere ?

I'm looking for a tutorial too, I have 4 levels of categories but I don't really know how to show children items in parents or make proper breadcrumbs

Did you find something??

Here they have an example of this. But still confusing to me How to apply this in real life project.

Is there any one who can explain more.

https://github.com/etrepat/baum/wiki/Example:-Products-and-categories

If anyone's still interested in this here's an example implementation:

https://gist.github.com/patrickisgreat/a533a779dd1d2c01e76d58b06d3fc833