How to use actuallymab\laravel-comment comments system? - laravel

Question

I'm new to Laravel and I'm trying to implement a comments system on some posts. I found a package which seems well supported and I thought I could save some time by using it rather than starting from scratch.
The packing is here:
https://github.com/actuallymab/laravel-comment
There are some usage details but they don't seem quite clear enough for someone at my level.
Where I'm at:
Composer done
Migrations done
in my "User" model:
use Actuallymab\LaravelComment\CanComment;
In my "Post" model:
use Actuallymab\LaravelComment\Commentable;
class Posts extends Model {
use Commentable;
protected $canBeRated = true;
//etc
}
In my PostsController I have:
public function comment()
{
$userid = Auth::id();
$postid = "1"; //static post id for testing
$user = User::where('id','=',$userid);
$post = Post::where('id','=',$postid)->first();
$user->comment($post, 'Lorem ipsum ..', 3); // static comment for testing
}
And finally, my posts.blade:
<form action="{{ route('posts.comment') }}" method="POST">
{{ csrf_field() }}
<input type="text" id="commentdata"/> //not using this yet
<div class="form-group">
<input type="submit" class="btn btn-primary" value="Publish" />
<a class="btn btn-primary" href="{{ route('posts.comment') }}">Cancel</a>
</div>
Unfortunately, when I hit by submit button I get:
"Call to undefined method Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder::comment()"
So it seems I need to define a function in my User model? I'm not sure what to do here. I'm hoping some has used this package before.
Update 1:
I'm now using the following PostsController code:
public function comment()
{
$userid = "1"; //static user id for testing
$postid = "1"; //static post id for testing
$user = User::find($userid);
$post = Post::where('id','=',$postid)->first();
$user->comment($post, 'Lorem ipsum ..', 3); // static comment for testing
}
The error remains as "Call to undefined method Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder::comment()"

Answer 1

Call to undefined method Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder
You can be almost certain when you receive this error it's because you've missed out a step: you're calling a method on the query builder not the model. You need to retrieve the model(s) from the query.
Here's your current code:
$user = User::where('id','=',$userid);
You need to retrieve the first model from the results, e.g:
$user = User::where('id','=',$userid)->first();
Although you can improve this by using the find method which accepts a primary key and returns the model, e.g:
$user = User::find($userid);
Then from there you're ready to create the comment:
$user = User::find($userid);
$user->comment($post, 'Lorem ipsum ..', 3);
Example of using the trait:
<?php
namespace App;
use Actuallymab\LaravelComment\CanComment;
class User
{
use CanComment;
}