Doesn't work relations in Laravel

Question

I've got two models Announcement:

 class Announcement extends Eloquent {

    public function characteristics() {
    $this->hasMany('Characteristic');
    }

}

and Characteristic:

class Characteristic extends Eloquent {
protected $guarded = array();

public static $rules = array();

public function announcement() {
    return $this->belongsTo('Announcement');
}
}

There's two tables:

 CREATE TABLE characteristics (
   id integer PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
   title varchar DEFAULT('Количество'),
   announcement_id integer,
   count integer DEFAULT('0'),
   value_name varchar DEFAULT('шт.'),
   created_at datetime,
   updated_at datetime,
   deleted_at datetime
 );

and

 CREATE TABLE announcements (
   id integer PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
   title varchar DEFAULT(''),
   description varchar DEFAULT(''),
   created_at datetime,
   updated_at datetime,
   deleted_at datetime
 );

Both of them are seeded with some test data.

This is my code in routes.php:

 Route::get('/', function()
 {
    $test = Announcement::find(1)->characteristics();

    var_dump($test);
 });

But I Always got NULL. I can't understand, why...

Answer 1

You have to return the $this->hasMany('Characteristic', 'announcement_id');

You are missing the return.

Answer 2

Try like this:

public function characteristics() {
    return $this->hasMany('Characteristic','announcement_id');
}

public function announcement() {
    return return $this->belongsTo('Announcement','announcement_id');
}

function name is the name of your table. First parameter is the model name, second parameter is the matching key name.

Also for good practice, add a foreign key to announcement_id

$table->foreign('announcement_id')->references('id')->on('announcements')->onDelete('cascade');

Also try the query like:

$test = Announcement::find(1)->characteristics; //not a method name