Laravel 5.1 - BelongsTo relationship returns null

Question

\App\User

class User

public function status() {

    return $this->belongsTo('App\UserStatus', 'user_status_id', 'id');
}

\App\UserStatus

class UserStatus

protected $fillable = ['id'];

public function user() {

    return $this->hasMany('App\User', 'user_status_id', 'id');
}

I already have the $user object from a simple User::find() query with some fields, then I try to access the status object by lazy loading it with $user->load('status') method.

I'm following the docs, but it seems useless since $user->status still returns null.

public function foo(User $user) {

    $user->load('status');
    $user->status // returns null
}

What am I doing wrong?

--------- SOLUTION ---------

Actually, to lazy load any relationship, the foreign key value needs to be stored in the model object.

In my find operation, I wasn't querying the user_status_id field. When I added this field into the query, the $user->status statement started to return the UserStatus model.

I don't think this information is written on the Laravel docs, it may be simple, but it took me some time to figure that out.

Answer 1

Actually, to lazy load any relationship, the foreign key value needs to be stored in the model object.

In my find operation, I wasn't querying the user_status_id field. When I added this field into the query, the $user->status statement started to return the UserStatus model.

I don't think this information is written on the Laravel docs, it may be simple, but it took me some time to figure that out.

Answer 2

in status() relation replace the line with

return $this->belongsTo('\App\UserStatus', 'user_status_id');

in user() relation with this

return $this->hasMany('\App\User', 'user_status_id');

Long story short add a '\' before App and remove third parameter since it is not many-to-many relationship.

Also make sure that you actually use Eloquent so add on top of models

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class MODELNAME extends Model

and assign a table

protected $table = 'model_table';

Answer 3

I was using Psy Shell to run it. For the first argument in belongsTo(), that could just be Classname::class. I encountered the case that I cannot perform belongsTo(), but if you restart your Psy Shell, it worked. It is weird though.