Laravel belongsToMany where doesn't have one of
Stefan Bogdanescu
Founder & Senior Architect · 2026-06-29
# Mastering `belongsToMany`: How to Find Records Without Specific Relationships in Laravel
As developers working with relational databases via Eloquent, navigating many-to-many relationships—especially those involving pivot tables—is a common task. When you have a collection of items (like videos) linked to several categories, determining which items belong *exclusively* to a subset of categories requires more than a simple `whereHas` query.
This post dives deep into a common pitfall when using Eloquent's relationship methods and shows you the most robust, efficient ways to solve complex exclusion problems in Laravel. We will tackle the scenario where you need to find all videos that are **not** associated with specific categories.
## The Scenario: A Many-to-Many Challenge
Imagine we have two models: `Video` and `Category`, linked by a pivot table (e.g., `category_video`).
We want to select all `videos` where the video is *not* linked to Category 2 **and** *not* linked to Category 3.
Here is the data setup we are working with:
* **Video 1:** Linked to Categories {1, 2, 3}
* **Video 2:** Linked to Categories {1, 3}
* **Video 3:** Linked to Category {1}
Our goal is to retrieve **Video 3**, as it is the only video not in categories 2 or 3.
## Why the Initial Approach Fails: The Logic Trap
You attempted to use `whereHas` to filter based on the related categories, which is a very common starting point. However, the logic often gets inverted when trying to find exclusions.
Your attempt looked something like this:
```php
Video::whereHas('categories', function($query) {
$query->whereNotIn('category_id', [2, 3]);
})->take(25)->get();
```
As you correctly observed, this query fails because it searches for videos that *have at least one* category that is *not* 2 or 3. In our example:
* Video 1 has Category 1 (which is not 2 or 3), so it passes the filter.
* Video 2 has Category 1 (which is not 2 or 3), so it passes the filter.
This logic returns videos that are associated with *some* valid category, rather than videos that are *excluded* from specific categories. To find elements that **do not** have a relationship matching a certain set, we need to use explicit exclusion methods provided by Eloquent and SQL.
## The Correct Solutions: Finding Exclusions
There are several powerful ways to achieve this exclusionary logic in Laravel, offering different trade-offs in readability and