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Laravel 9 - implementing using `hasManyThrough` when attempting to eager load related models

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 77 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-06-13
laravel eloquent relationships PHP

I tried several approaches but none seem to work... I've encountered a strange issue with I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me... I need some guidance on I'm trying to use the `hasManyThrough` relationship in my Laravel 9 application, but I'm running into issues when I attempt to eager load the related models. My setup involves three models: `User`, `Post`, and `Comment`. A `User` can have many `Posts`, and each `Post` can have many `Comments`. Hereโ€™s how I've defined the relationships: In the `User` model: ```php class User extends Model { public function posts() { return $this->hasMany(Post::class); } public function comments() { return $this->hasManyThrough(Comment::class, Post::class); } } ``` In the `Post` model: ```php class Post extends Model { public function comments() { return $this->hasMany(Comment::class); } } ``` In the `Comment` model: ```php class Comment extends Model { // no special relationships needed here } ``` When I try to get users along with their comments using eager loading like this: ```php $users = User::with('comments')->get(); ``` I expect to see all users with their associated comments, but instead, I get the following behavior: ``` SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'comments.post_id' in 'field list' ``` I've checked the database schema, and the `comments` table indeed has a `post_id` column. However, I suspect the question might be related to how Laravel is interpreting the eager loading. I tried using a simple query to check if I can fetch comments directly from a post, and that works fine: ```php $post = Post::find(1); $comments = $post->comments; ``` This leads me to believe that thereโ€™s a misconfiguration in the `hasManyThrough` relationship or how I'm attempting to load it. I've also ensured that the foreign keys are set correctly in the migrations. Can someone guide to figure out what I might be missing in my eager loading setup? Any insights into how to resolve this would be greatly appreciated! What's the best practice here? Has anyone dealt with something similar? Hoping someone can shed some light on this. I'm working in a macOS environment. What would be the recommended way to handle this?