Laravel search based on foreign key from a different table - laravel

Question

I have three tables post,user and country.
Post is saved by user who is from a country.
Now I want to search all posts of all users from a country.
so user will filter by country and I get country code from search box to controller $request->input($country);
Here are my model relationships:
POST MODEL:
class Post extends Model
{
protected $table = 'posts';
protected $dates = ['status_change'];
public function photos()
{
return $this->hasMany(Photo::class,'post');
}
public function make_rel()
{
return $this->belongsTo(Make::class, 'make_id' ,'id','make_logo');
}
public function user_rel()
{
return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'created_by' ,'id');
}
}
COUNTRY MODEL:
class Country extends Model
{
public function users(){
return $this->hasMany('App\User');
}
}
USER MODEL:
class User extends Authenticatable
{
public function country_rel()
{
return $this->belongsTo(Country::class, 'country' ,'country_code');
}
}
SEARCH FUNCTION
public function search(Request $request)
{
$this->validate($request, [
'country' => 'required',
]);
$country = Country::where('country_name',$request->input('country'))->get();
$data = Post::where('created_by',$country->user_rel->name)
->get();
dd($data);
}
This is not working. Could anyone advise what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I would use hasManyThrugh. The documentation even uses your exact use case:
class Country extends Model
{
public function users(){
return $this->hasMany('App\User');
}
public function posts() {
return $this->hasManyThrough(
'App\Post',
'App\User',
'country_id', // Foreign key on users table...
'user_id', // Foreign key on posts table...
'id', // Local key on countries table...
'id' // Local key on users table...
);
}
}