Laravel relationships setup

Question

I'm working on a Laravel installation where I have (among other things)

• Teachers (table:users (cols: id, name, type), model:User, users.type = 2)
• Students (table:users (id, name, type), model:User, users.type = 1)
• Schools (table:schools (id, name), model:School)
• Collections of students (table:student_collection (id, name), model:StudentCollection)
• & table student_collections_users for linking the student-users to collections (model: StudentsCollections, columns id, user_id, collection_id)

I have managed to setup some relationships, but can't get my head around to get

• Which teachers teach a student
• Which collections does a student belong to

Currently I'm trying to get the collections with

//User.php
public function collections() {
    $collection = $this->hasManyThrough('\App\StudentsCollections', '\App\User', 'id', 'user_id');
    return $collection;
}

//Controller
$user = \App\User::find($id);
$user->collections = $user->collections();

but it only returns the id's of the collections. How can I get the full data object for each collection?

I'm using Laravel 5.3.

Answer 1

First, In your example code, are the table names correct?

I see a table called 'students_collections', but your belongsToMany has a table name (second param) 'student_collections_users'. That's a typo, I presume.

Second, what does return an empty result? Calling the collections method or the collections property on the User model? Can you add some sample code?

Third: you have actual data in the database (through a seeder or real data)? I know this is obvious, but sometimes people tend to forget the obvious... :-)