laravel one-to-many relationship is null

Question

I have 3 models: User, Company and Branch.

In a blade file i want to be able to display the branch the company of the user belongs to.

In my opinion i should have the following relationships:

User -> Company : user belongsto a company and a company has many users , so this in a one-to-many relationship.

Company -> Branch: A company belongsto a branch and a branch can have many companies. So once again a one-to-many relationship.

I have foreign keys in the users table: company_id which references id on the company table. Another FK in the company table: branch_id which references id on the branch table.

In my blade file want to display the branch name like this: {{ $user->company->branch->name }} where only name is a property. Company and branch are relationships.

My query looks like this:

 $users = User::with(['company','company.branche' => function($q){
            $q->select('name');
        }])->inRandomOrder()->paginate(24);

<?php

namespace App;

use App\Events\GeneralEvent;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Nicolaslopezj\Searchable\SearchableTrait;
use Spatie\Permission\Traits\HasRoles;

class User extends Authenticatable implements MustVerifyEmail
{
    use Notifiable, SoftDeletes, HasRoles, SearchableTrait;

    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $fillable = [
        'gender', 'first_name','last_name', 'email', 'password',
    ];

    /**
     * The attributes that should be hidden for arrays.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $hidden = [
        'password', 'remember_token',
    ];

    /**
     * The attributes that should be cast to native types.
     *
     * @var array
     */

...



    public function company()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo(Company::class,'company_id');
    }   

}

<?php

namespace App;

use App\Events\GeneralEvent;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;
use Nicolaslopezj\Searchable\SearchableTrait;

class Company extends Model
{
    use SoftDeletes, SearchableTrait;


    ...

    public function branche()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo(Branche::class);
    }   
}

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Nicolaslopezj\Searchable\SearchableTrait;

class Branche extends Model
{
    protected $fillable = [
        'name'
    ];

    protected $searchable = [
        'columns' => [
            'name' => 10,
        ],
    ];

    public function companies()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(Company::class);
    }
}

However when i dump the $user->company i get null. So adding the branch after that is pointless for now. When i dump the user the relation shows up but is null. I have no idea where i am going wrong. Can someone please help?

Answer 1

So the problem was i had one of my foreign keys pointing to the wrong table. Doh.

Answer 2

You have to include the id of the branch so that eloquent can link the branch and company you can do like that

 $users = User::with(['company','company.branche' => function($q){
            $q->select('id','name');
        }])->inRandomOrder()->paginate(24);

OR Like that

 $users = User::with('company.branche:id,name')->inRandomOrder()->paginate(24);