Laravel Eloquent ORM many to many relation doesn't work with joining with other table?

Question

Here I have these tables

table 1 => shops 
           -------------
           id | name
table 2 => menus
          -------
           id | name | category_id 

 table 3 (pivot table) => menu_shop 
                         ---------
                        id | menu_id | shop_id
table 4 => categories 
           ----------
            id | name

I want to get the menus and shops with specific category name then my query is here

$menus =Menu::with('shops')->leftJoin('categories','menus.category_id','=','categories.id') ->where('categories.name','=','Chinese') ->take(6)->get();

then I display in the blade

 @foreach($menus as $chinesemenu)

                    <div class="col-md-6 col-sm-12">

                        <div class="menu">
                            <img src="{{ '/images/menus/'. $chinesemenu->image }}" class="menuimg">
                            <p class="menutitle">{{$chinesemenu->title}} - <span class="menuprice">{{$chinesemenu->price}} Ks</span>
                                <a data-id="{{$chinesemenu->id}}" data-name="{{$chinesemenu->title}}" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#modalEdit" class="homeorder" ><i class="mdi mdi-cart"></i> </a>
                            </p>
                            <p class='menudescription'>
                                {{$chinesemenu->description}}

                            </p>
                            <span class="menushop">
                                    @foreach($chinesemenu->shops as $shop)
                                    {{$shop->name}}
                                     @endforeach
                                </span>
                        </div>

                    </div>
                @endforeach

Everything is ok except I only get only one shop from {{$shop->name}} after joining with categories table but it has two shops.

But when I change the query to this

$menus =Menu::with('shops')->take(6)->get();

I got the right output. But I have to join with categories table. help!

Answer 1

Make query like

$menus = Menu::with('shops', 'category')->whereHas('category', function ($query) {
    return $query->where('name', '=', 'Chinese');
})->take(6)->get();

And you need relation in Menu

public function category()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(Category::class)
}

Now you should get only menus with category named "Chinese". :)

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