How to get modified relationship laravel - laravel

Question

We have the models: Question and Answer.
In the answers table, we have a boolean column with the name accepted and we have just one accepted Answer. We want to get question with its answers and accept answer separately.
I use two approaches, but I don't know which is better:
1). check if the relation is loaded if loaded filter relations and get an accepted answer like this:
if(!$this->relationLoaded('answers')){
$this->load('answers');
}
return $this->answers->firstWhere('accepted',true);
2). We can use this approach too:
function accepted_answer(){
return $this->answer()->where('accepted',true);
}
The problem of the second approach is we get an array, but we expect a single response or null.
Is there any better approach to this or we can use neither 1 or 2?

Answer 1

Create an Accessor on Question model.
class Question extends Model
{
public function getSelectedAnswerAttribute()
{
return $this->answers->where('accepted', true)->first();
}
}
now in every Answer instance has an attribute called selected_answer.
You can access it like,
$answer->selected_answer;
Note
this 'selected_answer' is not fetching from database, it filters from already fetched answers list. so its more efficient than your 2nd approach.
and, If you want this attribute automatically bind to the Question model always. add this accessor to appends array.
Model
protected $appends = ['selected_answer'];

Answer 2

create accepted scope at your answer model.
public function scopeAccepted($query){
return $query->where("accepted",true)->first();
}
then you can easly retreive first accepted answer.
$question->answer()->accepted();
for more further check out query scopes;

Answer 3

You should go with the second approach as you will have a single source to change later on if something changes (instead of digging through a lot of controllers)
To get the result, use ->get(); at the end of builder query.
P.S: Scopes are generally always better than writing queries manually inside the controller