Access user's properties (with pivot table) laravel 5.1 - laravel

Question

I have a users table. The user has possibility to upload a post. The post is saved well to the database. The users can follow each other - so on a pivot table each follower_id has followees_id.
I need to get the posts of the current user followee's . I am kinda messed with getting it from a pivot table.
Here's my code so far:
controller:
protected function get_followee_posts($followee_posts) ////$followee_posts passed from the route.
{
$user = $this->user;
$user->followee()->attach($followee_posts);
$followee_posts = User::find($followee_posts);
}
view:
<div class="following_posts">
<p> Posts from people you're following: <p>
#foreach ($user->follower_id->followee_id->posts as $post)
<form action="/html/tags/html_form_tag_action.cfm" method="post">
<textarea name="comments" id="comments" style="width:96%;height:90px;background-color:white;color:black;border:none;padding:2%;font:22px/30px sans-serif;">
{!! $posts->full_post !!} </textarea>
</form>
#endforeach
route:
Route::get('hub/{followee_posts}','HubController#get_followee_posts')->name('followee_posts');
I am getting an error with the current code saying:
ErrorException in 7340f90cc5faf1a298fcc646b7248b22 line 105:
Trying to get property of non-object
Any help would be lovely. Thank you.

Answer 1

Your not too specific about your schema, but this is how I would go about it.
User Model
class User extends Model
{
protected $table = 'users';
public function posts()
{
return $this->hasMany('Post');
}
public function followers()
{
return $this->hasMany('Follower');
}
}
Follower Model
class Follower extends Model
{
protected $table = 'followers';
public function user()
{
return $this->belongs_to('User');
}
public function posts()
{
return $this->hasMany('Post', 'user_id', 'follower_id');
}
}
Post Model
class Post extends Model
{
protected $table = 'posts';
public function user()
{
return $this->belongs_to('User');
}
}
The followers table would look something like this:
user_id
follower_id
You could then use eloquent method chains to get the posts of a users followers:
// Get Users object with followers and followers posts
// We use with() to eager load relationships
$user = User::with('followers.posts')->find(2);
// Return associative array of post objects
$postsArray = $user->followers->lists('posts');
// Combine posts into a single collection
$posts = (new \Illuminate\Support\Collection($postsArray))->collapse()->toArray();
print_r($posts);