Kohana 2.3.4 ORM pivot table query

Question

I'm trying to query a pivot table with Kohana's ORM and I'm wondering if there is a built in function I'm missing. Currently I only have 2 models setup for the tables "categories" and "products". There is a pivot table "categories_products", but I don't need a model for it when inserting data with this:

$product = ORM::factory('product');
$product->add(ORM::factory('category', $addCat));

However, I can't figure out how to query it without creating a model for it. The "join_table" function only returns the name of the pivot table (which I thought selected the table at first). If you can save data to the pivot table without a model, it seems to me that you should be able to retrieve data in a similar way. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can access your categories without any explicit request like this:

$product_object = ORM::factory('product', $your_product_id);

foreach ($product->categores as category):
    //access category ORM object...
endforeach;

Kohana will request the categories for your product when you first try to access them I think.

Answer 2

The above actually didn't work as predicted for me. I kept getting an error that the property didn't exist in the model. This script has been working though.

                $pivot = ORM::factory('category')->join_table('products'); //pivot table name between products and categories
            $productsTotal = ORM::factory('product')->join($pivot, $pivot . '.product_id', 'id')->where('category_id', $id)->find_all();