Eloquent Model with dynamic table..?

I've got a generic model called Item and a related model called Itemproperties.

Item -> hasOne -> Itemproperties

Itemproperties -> belongsTo -> Item

The Item model has a property called 'itemtype_id' which tells the model which table to store to. Ex: itemtype = 1, then table is itemproperties_1 for itemtype = 2, then table is itemproperties_2.

So I changed the getTable() method on the Itemproperties model:

function getTable(){
    return 'item_properties_' . $this->itemtype_id;
}

So, when creating a new item and its properties, I've been setting up the Itemproperties like this:

// Create & Save the Item
$item = new Item(['itemtype_id' => $itemtype_id]);
$item->save();

// Save the Properties
$itemProperties = new ItemProperties($properties);
$itemProperties->itemtype_id = $item->itemtype_id;
$item->properties()->save($itemProperties);

This seems to work fine... when saving the Itemproperties.

However, when I try to retrieve them, by doing $item->properties, I don't have a way to tell it the itemtype_id, so it can't find the correct table.

My question: Is there a way to set up the eloquent relationship so that I can pass the item->itemtype_id to the Itemproperties so it knows which table to use?

Or is there a better overall strategy to accomplish what I'm doing using different tables for different item types?

via Chebli Mohamed