A Laravel 5.1 package designed to enhance Eloquent users with connections between users, including approvals by both users and additional connection data.

Connectable includes many shortcuts to creating one's own Friend system, but the developer is free to implement the details however they require.

1. Run composer require gridprinciples/connectable from your project directory.

2. Add the following to the providers array in config/app.php:
   GridPrinciples\Friendly\Providers\ConnectableServiceProvider::class,

3. Publish the migrations and config file:
   php artisan vendor:publish --provider="GridPrinciples\Friendly\Providers\ConnectableServiceProvider"

4. Run the migrations:
   php artisan migrate
   This will add a connections table to your database to track relationships between models.

Add the Connectable trait to your User model:
use Connectable;

You may now relate users to each other:

// Using the "requesting" user model...
$dad = User::where('name', 'darth')->first();

// ...and the one receiving the connection request...
$kid = User::where('name', 'luke')->first();

// may include "pivot" data.
$dad->connect($kid, [
    'name'       => 'Father',
    'other_name' => 'Son',
    'start'      => '1980-05-21',
]);

// ...and later, the secondary user approves the request:
$kid->approve($dad);

// At this point, either user is associated with the other via their connections attribute (a Collection):
$relatives = $kid->connections->toArray();

// Either user may sever the relationship, resulting in a type of block:
$kid->disconnect($dad);

The included implementation table includes the following additional information about each connection:

• name: Describes the requesting user's relationship with the secondary user.
• other_name: Describes the secondary user's relationship with the requesting user.
• start: When the relationship started, or will start.
• end: When the relationship

When time you access the "connections" property on a user Model, the connections will be loaded and cached. If you make changes to a different relationship which would affect a loaded user's connections, you might need to reload them:

$user->resetConnections();