Model and many-to-many relations in select field

[henninghorn]

Hi @netojose

I'm building a form for a model (Venue), which can have multiple tags (many-to-many relationship)
When I'm editing a form, I would like to see which tags that are already added to the venue model.

To do so, it seems like you need to have a very specific data structure:

{!! Form::select('tags', 'Select tags', [1 => 'Some tag', 2 => 'Another tag'])->multiple() !!}

This means, that you cannot do something like this:

// Controller
$tags = Tag::all();
return view('venue.edit', ['tags' => $tags]);

// Blade
{!! Form::select('tags', 'Select tags', $tags)->multiple() !!}

Instead you need to do this to accomplish the correct data structure and have existing relationships selected:

// edit method in controller
$model = $venue->toArray();
$model['tags'] = $venue->tags->pluck('name', 'id')->all();

$data = [
    'model' => $model,
    'tags' => Tag::all()->pluck('name', 'id')->all()
];

return view('venue.edit', $data);

Is this by design how you should handle such forms? E.g. forms which has relationships with other models? Like a blog post with tags?