How i can prevent duplicate name on the table using eloquent query in laravel - laravel

Question

I am currently working on a desktop management application with laravel 5.6. According to the management rule a patient can have one or more consultations according to given dates. When I display the list of consultations, I have the same name that repeats, the name that repeats corresponds to the patient who had several consultations, my question of how to avoid this. What I want is the name, and all the dates for these consultations.
class Consultation extends Model
{
public function patient()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\Models\Patient');
}
}
class Patient extends Model
{
public function consultations()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\Models\Consultation');
}
}
Here is the query :
$consultations = Consultation::all();

Answer 1

The simplest (but not the prettiest) way to do this is to simply find all patients with consultations. Put those patients in an array, and then in your blade you would loop through these patients and show the consultations individually.
Controller Code:
$active_patients = [];
foreach(Patient::all() as $patient) {
if($patient->consultations->count()>0)
array_push($active_patients,$patient);
}
Pass $active_patients to your view, then loop over it as shown below. Obviously, I don't know all of the attribute names for your Patient or Consultation models and you will need to fix html markup as required, but you can get the picture:
#foreach($active_patients as $patient)
<p>{{$patient->name}}:</p>
#foreach($patient->consultations as $consultation)
<p>{{$consultation->date}}</p>
#endforeach
#endforeach
Disclaimer: This is not the most robust way to do this. It's simply the most straightforward approach. The best way to do this is to use scoped queries combined with appended attributes. For instance, you would make a scope on the Patients model for all patients that have a consultation by using the 'whereHas' eloquent query method to find patients that have consultations scheduled. Then you could just reference them directly as ActivePatient rather than having to build an array each time you reference them. You could also append an attribute to the Consultations model that does the same thing and grabs each consultation for the specific users and makes a nested model collection, but that's much more involved. I'd be happy to share that method with you if you want, but the above code would at least provide you with a working method to achieve what you requested.