I created a model Game using a condition / constraint for a relation as follows:
class Game extends Eloquent {
// many more stuff here
// relation without any constraints ...works fine
public function videos() {
return $this->hasMany('Video');
}
// results in a "problem", se examples below
public function available_videos() {
return $this->hasMany('Video')->where('available','=', 1);
}
}
When using it somehow like this:
$game = Game::with('available_videos')->find(1);
$game->available_videos->count();
everything works fine, as roles is the resulting collection.
MY PROBLEM:
when I try to access it without eager loading
$game = Game::find(1);
$game->available_videos->count();
an Exception is thrown as it says "Call to a member function count() on a non-object".
Using
$game = Game::find(1);
$game->load('available_videos');
$game->available_videos->count();
works fine, but it seems quite complicated to me, as I do not need to load related models, if I do not use conditions within my relation.
Have I missed something? How can I ensure, that available_videos are accessible without using eager loading?
For anyone interested, I have also posted this issue on http://forums.laravel.io/viewtopic.php?id=10470
Just in case anyone else encounters the same problems.
Note, that relations are required to be camelcase. So in my case available_videos() should have been availableVideos().
You can easily find out investigating the Laravel source:
// Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model.php
...
/**
* Get an attribute from the model.
*
* @param string $key
* @return mixed
*/
public function getAttribute($key)
{
$inAttributes = array_key_exists($key, $this->attributes);
// If the key references an attribute, we can just go ahead and return the
// plain attribute value from the model. This allows every attribute to
// be dynamically accessed through the _get method without accessors.
if ($inAttributes || $this->hasGetMutator($key))
{
return $this->getAttributeValue($key);
}
// If the key already exists in the relationships array, it just means the
// relationship has already been loaded, so we'll just return it out of
// here because there is no need to query within the relations twice.
if (array_key_exists($key, $this->relations))
{
return $this->relations[$key];
}
// If the "attribute" exists as a method on the model, we will just assume
// it is a relationship and will load and return results from the query
// and hydrate the relationship's value on the "relationships" array.
$camelKey = camel_case($key);
if (method_exists($this, $camelKey))
{
return $this->getRelationshipFromMethod($key, $camelKey);
}
}
This also explains why my code worked, whenever I loaded the data using the load() method before.
Anyway, my example works perfectly okay now, and $model->availableVideos always returns a Collection.