Laravel eloquent "with" the easy way - laravel

Question

I have posted a related question a few hours ago but I can not understand why Laravel eloquent is so complicated... once again I read many posts on the subject and not one gave me the solution to a very simple request.
Here is the simple example where a post belongs to one article and one user only. So the relations are defined as below in the Post model:
public function article()
{
return $this->belongsTo(Article::class);
}
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
}
I am quite new to Laravel eloquent... so I simply want to display a list of all the posts with their id, comment and related user name and article title as per relation defined in the model above. I believe that is quite simple and I just learned the "with" today.
So in the PostController, I have:
$posts = Post::orderBy($sortField,$sortOrder)
->with(['article','user'])
->get();
This gives me a collection with all the posts.
First question, do I have to manipulate the 2 related fields in such a way that they become easily accessible in the list view below? Or can I avoid this in controller in anyway by putting it in the query?
foreach ($posts as $post) {
$post->article = $post->article()->pluck('article');
$post->user = $post->user()->pluck('name');
}
In the above, the field $post->article lists all the article titles in an array (article field).
If I add [0] at the end, I get the first element of the array.
If I use [post->article_id] I get the wrong related title.
So nothing works the way I want... why is it so complicated???
Ultimately, here is what I need to do in the list view.
#foreach ($posts as $post)
<p>{{ $post->id }} : {{ $post->comment }} by {{ $post->name }} from article {{ $post->article }}</p>
#endforeach
By doing the query in query builder instead, I get what I want immediately... so how to do the same in eloquent?
$users = DB::table('posts')
->join('articles', 'articles.id', '=', 'posts.user_id')
->join('users', 'users.id', '=', 'posts.user_id')
->select('users.*', 'articles.article', 'users.name')
->get();

Answer 1

It is not clear what is making you misunderstand it, so here is an explanation.
First of all, you have two belongsTo relations user & article in your post model.
When you run this
$posts = Post::orderBy($sortField,$sortOrder)
->with(['article','user'])
->get();
You get a collection of Posts and with the article and the user in the attributes $post->article & $post->user respectively. That queryBuild will launch 3 queries, one for the posts, one for the articles and one final for the users.
Now, in your blade, you want to access the attribute article in your Article model wich is inside the Post model so you do it like this:
#foreach ($posts as $post)
.... from article {{ $post->article->article }}</p>
#endforeach
Notes: When you call $post->article() you get a query builder, so you follow it with a
first() => instance of a model / null
get() => Collection of instance of a model or empty collection
pluck() => array of the attribute plucked
value() => the value of the first element as if you used pluck
... (there are other ways to get results)
When you call $post->article without parenthesis, it will run :
first() if the relation is a belongsTo
get() if the relation is belongsToMany or HasMany or....
OR
It will give you the attribute if already fetched (either a collection or a model instance).
So, since you used with('article') in the first query (already fetched), $post->article will return an instance of the model Article and no new query will be run.