It's so much easier to do that what you have.

1. call your pivot table group_user (singular and alphabetic order - this is the convention so you don't have specify your foreign keys)

2. use this code

User.php

function groups()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('Group');
}

Group.php
function users()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('User');
}


// to get all groups of a user
$user = User::find(1);
foreach ($user->groups as $group) {
echo $group->name;
}

I renamed the pivot table and adjusted Models but i prefer to demand the "dirty job" to the HomeController instead of doing a foreach directly in the view...

That's fine. it was just an example. it should still work the same way