Converting to a Polymorphic Relationship

[qontori]

Hi there,

"I" migrated one my apps from joomla to laravel with backpack and mimicked much of the same functionality and DB design. Part of this was creating three tables as in attached pic such that the 3rd table xyz has data from both abc and def. This was before I knew what polymorphic relationships were. In Joomla we used code to pull the required data based on the two columns link_key and link_id representing the table and id of that table. I would like to re-engineer this using a polymorphic relationship.

Before I try this I thought it would be prudent to seek some general advise as there is existing data in the tables already. What I am thinking of doing is

• In a copy of my live app, using migrations, build a new table with the desired polymorphic relationships and tables as one would do if building a new application
• Copy the data over to the new table
• Change the code to use the new table
• Delete the old table

An alternative, if possible

• Using migrations add two new columns to table xyz to replace link_key and link_id for the polymorphic relationships
• Copy the data from the old columns to the new

I would appreciate any advice on the above two approaches or others that you feel are better.

Thanks advance for your assistance