Eloquent $appends acts strangely in laravel 5.3 - laravel

Question

am simply trying to include a new attribute to be available in the json response but for some reason am also getting the object relation as well.
// user model
protected $guarded = ['id'];
protected $appends = ['role_name'];
protected $hidden = ['remember_token', 'password'];
public function getRoleNameAttribute()
{
return $this->role->type;
}
public function role()
{
return $this->belongsTo(Role::class);
}
// role model
public function users()
{
return $this->hasMany(User::class);
}
when i use dd($user); i get
User {#303
#guarded: array:1 [
0 => "id"
]
#appends: array:1 [
0 => "role_name"
]
#hidden: array:2 [
0 => "remember_token"
1 => "password"
]
#connection: null
#table: null
#primaryKey: "id"
#keyType: "int"
#perPage: 15
+incrementing: true
+timestamps: true
#attributes: array:7 [
"name" => "testing"
"email" => "email#asd.com"
"password" => "$2y$10$fogQXhJZm5eoViM38pge1.BmNxY7IFl515zT83.Ks9Uj26kK9T6Im"
"role_id" => "83eee2e0-8939-48f7-9fbc-1c077e2265e5"
"id" => "a181fb4b-b65a-47b4-9c72-21ea15c6c5a6"
"updated_at" => "2017-01-30 20:23:52"
"created_at" => "2017-01-30 20:23:52"
]
#original: array:7 [
"name" => "testing"
"email" => "email#asd.com"
"password" => "$2y$10$fogQXhJZm5eoViM38pge1.BmNxY7IFl515zT83.Ks9Uj26kK9T6Im"
"role_id" => "83eee2e0-8939-48f7-9fbc-1c077e2265e5"
"id" => "a181fb4b-b65a-47b4-9c72-21ea15c6c5a6"
"updated_at" => "2017-01-30 20:23:52"
"created_at" => "2017-01-30 20:23:52"
]
...
}
and with return response()->json(compact('user')); instead i get
user: {
created_at: "2017-01-30 20:26:12"
email:"email#asd.com"
id:"4b83e031-e8c8-4050-963d-446cb383fb14"
name:"testing"
role:{
created_at:"2016-12-29 10:54:02"
id:"83eee2e0-8939-48f7-9fbc-1c077e2265e5"
type:"user"
updated_at:"2016-12-29 10:54:02"
}
role_id:"83eee2e0-8939-48f7-9fbc-1c077e2265e5"
role_name:"user"
updated_at:"2017-01-30 20:26:12"
}
but what i expect is to only have
user: {
created_at: "2017-01-30 20:26:12"
email:"email#asd.com"
id:"4b83e031-e8c8-4050-963d-446cb383fb14"
name:"testing"
role_id:"83eee2e0-8939-48f7-9fbc-1c077e2265e5"
role_name:"user"
updated_at:"2017-01-30 20:26:12"
}
so am not sure if this is the normal behavior or a bug or maybe am missing something ?
Laravel version 5.3.30

Answer 1

The reason why this is happening is the following
public function getRoleNameAttribute()
{
return $this->role->type;
}
The problem here is the when you say $this->role it will automatically attached the relationship to the model. In order to prevent this, you should simply be able to access the method directly, like $this->role().
public function getRoleNameAttribute()
{
return $this->role()->first()->type;
}