Laravel Eloquent join table realtionships

Question

I went through multiple examples and previous posts here, but I can't find what I am doing wrong. I have two tables:

Users

id    username
1     test1
2     test2
3     test3

Scores table

id    user_id    points
1     1          52
2     2          62
3     3          12

And now I want to get all scores and replace user_id with actual username. Here is my code:

ScoresController

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Score;
use App\Http\Resources\Score as ScoreResource;

class ScoresController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $scores = Score::with('user')->paginate(4);

        return ScoreResource::collection($scores);
    }
}

Score.php

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use App\User;

class Score extends Model
{
    public function user(){
        return $this->belongsTo(User::class,'user_id');
    }
}

User

<?php

namespace App;

use Laravel\Passport\HasApiTokens;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use App\Score;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasApiTokens, Notifiable;

    protected $fillable = [
        'username', 'email', 'password', 'avatar'
    ];

    protected $hidden = [
        'password', 'remember_token',
    ];

    public function scores(){
        return $this->hasMany(Score::class,'user_id');
    }
}

And Score resource

<?php

namespace App\Http\Resources;

use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;

class Score extends JsonResource
{
    public function toArray($request)
    {
        return [
            'username' => $this->user_id,
            'points' => $this->points,
        ];
    }
}

At the moment I am showing user_id and points, I tried with

$this->username OR $this->user-id->username

but none of them works and I know I could use DB or raw SQL, but I want to do it this way

Answer 1

Read this: https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/eloquent-relationships

foreach ($scores as $score) {
    echo $score->user->username;
}

Or in Blade:

@foreach ($score as $score)
    <p>{{ $score->user->username }}</p>
@endforeach

You must first access the 'property' which is the name you defined the function that handles the relationship. In your case that is user .
After that, you will be returned the User class for that user, where you can then access any properties you like.