title: Many To Many relationships in Laravel: belongsToMany() vs. hasManyThrough()
body: <p>What is the difference between using belongsToMany() or hasManyThrough() when defining a Many To Many relationship in Laravel?</p>
  
  <p>Example:
  <code>User</code>
  <code>Account</code>
  <code>Account_User</code></p>
  
  <p>So, User has a many to many relation to Account via the Account_User table. On top of being just the pivot table that defines the related Users with related Accounts, it also stores a <code>Account_User.role</code> field, which determines which role a given user has in a given account.</p>
  
  <p>What would the implications be of using either <code>User belongsToMany() Account</code> or <code>User hasManyThrough() Account Account_User</code>? Or is this essentially the same?</p>
  
  <p>When decided upon a method, I guess I should use the same method for the reverse relation definition.</p>