Is there a way that I can create a many-to-one relationship that looks and feels like a JSON array? I have a User entity that has "dates" associated with it. I want my serialized entity to look like this:
{
id: 1,
name: "Josh Doe",
age: 25,
dates: ["2021-08-11", "2021-08-12", "2021-08-31"]
}
I know I can create a JSON column, however, I thought it would be more efficient having a separate table as I am frequently querying by a specific date.
user_id date
1 2021-08-11
1 2021-08-12
However, when I create a standard many-to-one relationship, I do not get an array for "dates", rather I get an array of objects. Furthermore, when I denormalize data to update the User entity, I cannot provide an array of dates, I need to provide an array of objects.
Is there a way I can simply this and have the many-to-one act as an array? Alternativly, is JSON array less efficient ?