Laravel 5 - Eloquent relationships returning empty

Question

this is my first time trying out eloquent relationships. I've looked at multiple tutorials already.

I have two tables. Albums and Artists. An Artist can have many Albums. An Album can only have one Artist.

Here are the two Schemas and Models for both of these.

Artist Model

    <?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Artist extends Model
{
    /**
     * The database table used by the model.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $table = 'Artists';

    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $fillable = ['artist_name', 'artist_image_loc', 'followers'];

    public function albums()
    {
        return $this->hasOne('App\Album');
    }
}

Album Model

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Album extends Model
{
    /**
     * The database table used by the model.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $table = 'Albums';

    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $fillable = ['album_name', 'album_image_loc', 'artist_id'];

    public function artists()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo('App\Artist');
    }
}

Artist Schema

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreateArtistsTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('Artists', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('artist_name');
            $table->string('artist_image_loc');
            $table->integer('followers');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::drop('Artists');
    }
}

Album Schema

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreateAlbumsTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('Albums', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('album_name');
            $table->string('album_image_loc');
            $table->integer('artist_id')->unsigned();
            $table->timestamps();

            $table->foreign('artist_id')
                  ->references('id')
                  ->on('Artists');
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::drop('Albums');
    }
}

I have one album and one artist sitting in the database, with the album's artist_id set to the artist's id.

>>> $album = new App\Album;
=> App\Album {#694}
>>> $album->artists()->get()
=> Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection {#704
     all: [],
   }

I need to find out why these are returning empty.

Thanks for any help! Toby

Answer 1

If you say that an Artist can have many Albums, then, on the Artist class you should have this:

public function albums()
{
  return $this->hasMany('App\Album');
}

And, if an Album can only have one Artist, then, on the Album class you should have this:

public function artist()
{
  return $this->hasOne('App\Artist');
}

On your code you did just the opposite.

To retrieve the artist from an album you only need to do this:

$album->artist;

And to retrieve the albums from an artist:

$artist->albums;

So, you don't need to call the method, you can use eloquent's dynamic properties (in this case, artist and album) You can find more information here: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/eloquent-relationships