Laravel, Eloquent and Kyslik sorting joined tables? - laravel

Question

I'm stuck again. This time with the sorting links for 3 joined tables.
I'm building my query like this:
...
$query= Interaction::where('interactions.user_id', $id)->where('interactions.active', '1');
$query->join('contacts','interactions.contact_id','=','contacts.id');
$query->join('products','interactions.product_id','=','products.id');
$contact_username = request('contact_username');
$contact_name = request('contact_name');
$contact_type = request('contact_type');
$product_name = request('product_name');
$platform = request('platform');
$dateMode = request('dateMode');
$date = request('date');
$completed_at = request('completed_at');
$notesMode = request('notesMode');
$notes = request('notes');
//settings up some filters based on the request:
if ($contact_username) $query->whereJsonContains('contacts.username', $contact_username);
if ($contact_name) $query->where('contacts.name', $contact_name);
if ($contact_type) $query->where('contacts.type', $contact_type);
if ($product_name) $query->where('products.name', $product_name);
if ($platform) $query->where('interactions.platform', $platform);
if ($notes && $notesMode=='+') $query->where('interactions.notes', 'like', "%".$notes."%");
if ($notes && $notesMode=='-') $query->where('interactions.notes', 'not like', "%".$notes."%");
if ($date && $dateMode) $query->whereDate('date', $dateMode, $date);
if ($completed_at && $dateMode) $query->whereDate('completed_at', $dateMode, $completed_at);
//and finally:
$interactions = $query->sortable()->paginate(20,['interactions.*','contacts.username','contacts.name','contacts.type','products.name']);
...
Then in my view I have:
<th>#sortablelink('contact.username','Username')</th>
<th>Platform</th>
<th>Type</th>
<th>#sortablelink('contact.name','Name')</th>
<th>#sortablelink('product.name','Product')</th>
<th>#sortablelink('date','Date')</th>
<th>#sortablelink('notes','Notes')</th>
The last 2 links work great and everything is sorted as it should be, because they are from the "Interactions" table, but the links that should sort by the columns from the joined "Products" and "Contacts" tables fail.
What is the right way to reference these columns in the #sortablelink when they are coming from the joined tables?
PS: I have two other views which are working fine when only the "Products" and "Contacts" tables are used and the sorting for each column in these tables works fine, so I know the Models are set up correctly.

Answer 1

The solution turned out to be quite simple, but I had to sleep on the problem and tackle it again in the morning. :)
Instead of joining the two other tables manually, I did it like this:
$query= Interaction::where('interactions.user_id', $id)->where('interactions.active', '1')->with(['contact','product']);
//the two JOIN rows that were here were dropped. Everything else stayed the same.
and I added the relations in my "Interaction" model like this:
public function product() { return $this->belongsTo(Product::class); }
public function contact() { return $this->belongsTo(Contact::class); }
I hope this will be helpful to somebody. I lost a lot of hours trying to figure it out last night.