Laravel: return multiple relationships - laravel

Question

I have the following table:
The table is called user_eggs and it stores the user eggs.
eggs are items with additional data (hatch_time)
As you can see, user 2 has 2 eggs, which are items 46 and 47.
My items table stores the item general information such as name, image, description, etc...
How I can return the user eggs using $user->eggs() including the item data in my items table of the egg item_id?
I tried:
User Model:
/**
* Get the eggs
*/
public function eggs()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Egg::Class, 'user_eggs','user_id','item_id')
->withPivot('id','hatch_time');
}
but $user->eggs() returns an empty array.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

A simple approach will be:
in your UserEgg model define:
/**
* Get the user associated with egg.
*/
public function _user()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\User','user_id');
}
/**
* Get the item associated with egg.
*/
public function item()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\Item','item_id');
}
then in your controller:
use the model to extract everything like this:
$userEggs = UserEgg::where('user_id',2)->get();
foreach($userEggs as $userEgg){
$associateduser = $userEgg->_user;
$associatedItem = $userEgg->item;
}

Answer 2

Short answer
If you loop through the user's eggs:
foreach($user->eggs as $egg){
$item = Item::find($egg->pivot->item_id);
}
If you want to query:
$user->eggs()->wherePivot('item_id', 1)->get();
Long answer
From the Laravel Documentation
Retrieving Intermediate Table Columns
As you have already learned, working with many-to-many relations requires the presence of an intermediate table. Eloquent provides some very helpful ways of interacting with this table. For example, let's assume our User object has many Role objects that it is related to. After accessing this relationship, we may access the intermediate table using the pivot attribute on the models:
$user = App\User::find(1);
foreach ($user->roles as $role) {
echo $role->pivot->created_at;
}
Notice that each Role model we retrieve is automatically assigned a pivot attribute. This attribute contains a model representing the intermediate table, and may be used like any other Eloquent model.
By default, only the model keys will be present on the pivot object. If your pivot table contains extra attributes, you must specify them when defining the relationship:
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Role')->withPivot('column1', 'column2');
If you want your pivot table to have automatically maintained created_at and updated_at timestamps, use the withTimestamps method on the relationship definition:
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Role')->withTimestamps();
Filtering Relationships Via Intermediate Table Columns
You can also filter the results returned by belongsToMany using the wherePivot and wherePivotIn methods when defining the relationship:
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Role')->wherePivot('approved', 1);
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Role')->wherePivotIn('priority', [1, 2]);