Laravel 4 eager loaded nested relation returned as array, I want Model

Question

I am having problems accessing an object retrieved from a nested relationship. I can only access the nested relation as an array (it is returned as json). The other relation is returned fine as a Model. (I'm totally new to Laravel 4 and a lot of its concepts btw).

So say I use, $category = Category::with('publications.author')->find(5); I can iterate over the publications using $category->publications and $category->publications[0]->title will return what I expect.

The problem I have is when trying to access author:

$category->publications[0]->author->last_name throws an exception - 'Trying to get property of non-object'

but:

$category->publications[0]->author['last_name'] will return what I want.

This isn't a showstopper but I would like it to work as it looks like it should work according to the Laravel documentation.

So, where am I going wrong? Am I going about this the wrong way? Have I missed something? I have checked my method names and relations defined and it all looks correct to me.

These are my three Models: 'Category', 'Publication', 'Author'. Their relationships are defined as below:

Category

class Category extends \Eloquent {

protected $table = 'category';

public function publications()
{
    return $this->hasMany('Publication');
}

public function authors()
{
    return $this->hasManyThrough('Publication', 'Author');
}

}

Publication

class Publication extends \Eloquent {

protected $table = 'publication';

    public function author()
{
    return $this->belongsTo('Author');
}

    public function category()
{
    return $this->belongsTo('Category');
}
}

Author

class Author extends \Eloquent {

protected $table = 'author';

public function publications()
{
    return $this->hasMany('Publication');
}

}

I want to use the following code to get the data I want:

    $items = array();
    $category = Category::with('publications.author')->find(5);
    foreach($category->publications as $v)
    {
        $items[] = new ContentTeaser($v->title, $v->author->last_name, $v->slug, $v->default_image);
    }

Thanks for taking a look.

Answer 1

Relation that return many result will be return as Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection, hence you can manipulate it as array. Please refer to Laravel Documentation under Dynamic Property subject for clarification.

The model that you are mentioning is actually an Object in PHP. Object does not have a key and cannot be treated as array, it will have a property. A collection of result will have a number of object returned from the relation if the relation is one to many or many to many.

Answer 2

I figured this one out, and on reflection I don't think my question was particularly clear. The 'Trying to get property of non-object' error was happening when I was iterating over the collection and trying to access the 'author' properties (first_name, last_name) when there were some null results present for the author object.