John Davidson

Message:

I have a strange behavior in naming model relationship in my laravel application (Laravel 9, PHP 8.1)

I have two models

class User extends Model

{

    public function userSocialProviders()

    {

        return $this->hasMany(UserSocialProvider::class);

    }

}

class UserSocialProviders extends Model

{

    public function user()

    {

        return $this->belongsTo(User::class);

    }

}

When trying to fetch the relation using dynamic property it returns null

dd($user->userSocialProviders);   // null

it only works if I renamed the method to providers

class User extends Model

{

    public function providers()

    {

        return $this->hasMany(UserSocialProvider::class);

    }

}

then it returns the desired result

dd($user->providers);   // Collection<UserSocialProvider>

I don't know the reason behind that and of course it's a very bad name.
$user->providers doesn't mean anything related to socialAccounts

any help How to change the method name and still use the dynamic properies ?

---

My Answer:
In Laravel, the naming convention for defining relationships between models is important for the framework to automatically resolve the relationships.

In your case, the issue might be related to the naming convention used by Laravel to resolve the relationship. By default, Laravel expects the relationship method name to be the singular form of the related model class name.

In your example, the User model has a relationship method named `userSocialProviders`, which does not follow the default naming convention. This might be causing Laravel to not automatically resolve the relationship when you try to access it using the dynamic property.

To resolve this issue, you can explicitly specify the foreign key and local key in the relationship definition. This way, you can use a custom method name for the relationship while still being able to access it using the dynamic property.

Here's how you can update your relationship definitions:

php
class User extends Model
{
public function socialProviders()
{
return $this->hasMany(UserSocialProvider::class, 'user_id', 'id');
}
}

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


By explicitly specifying the foreign key and local key in the relationship definition, you can use a custom method name (`socialProviders`) while still being able to access the relationship using the dynamic property (`$user->socialProviders`).

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.