Laravel 5.2 User/Following System: hasMany Relation - has-many

Question

I'm stuck on a problem: I've created a simple user following system so users can follow each other. I'm using a table named follows to store the relation. I've created a hasMany relationship in my User class, and, when retrieving the results I'm getting exactly what I expect, however, I'd like to get some additional information from the users table, such as the username, avatar, etc. How do I go about this?
The follows table
// following_id is the person being followed
public function up()
{
Schema::create('follows', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id');
$table->integer('user_id')->unsigned();
$table->integer('following_id')->unsigned();
$table->timestamps();
$table->unique(['user_id', 'following_id']);
$table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users')->onDelete('cascade');
});
}
The User class
class User extends Authenticatable
{
// a user can have many followers
public function followers()
{
return $this->hasMany(Follow::class, 'following_id');
}
// a user may be following many people
public function following()
{
return $this->hasMany(Follow::class);
}
}
The method I'm calling in UsersController to see the results
// route is /{username}/followers
public function followers($username)
{
$user = User::where('username', $username)->first();
// get the user's followers
$followers = $user->following;
return $followers;
}
The current results are
[
{
id: 24,
user_id: 3,
following_id: 1,
created_at: "2016-02-13 11:42:59",
updated_at: "2016-02-13 11:43:02"
}
]
However, I'd like them to be the following: where fredflintstone is the user with ID of 1; e.g.; the user who is following user 3
[
{
id: 24,
user_id: 3,
following_id: 1,
following_username: 'fredflintstone',
created_at: "2016-02-13 11:42:59",
updated_at: "2016-02-13 11:43:02"
}
]
I've also created a Follow model, which is currently empty. I tried adding an inverse belongsTo relationship in it, but it didn't work. Mayhaps I did it wrong?

Answer 1

I have been using laravel for a long time,and i suggest you use join instead if laravel built in model for 'with'
Here is the code of using join, modify it according to your use
public function followers($username)
{
$user = User::where('username', $username)->first();
//Follower your model name for the follows table
//if you dont have a model use DB::table('follows') instead
$followers=Follower::where('user_id',$user->id)
->join('users as follower','follower.id','=','follows.following_id')
->select('follows.id','follows.following_id','follows. user_id','follower.name as following_username')->get();
return $followers;
}

Answer 2

Figured it out. I needed to join the users table to the query.
public function following()
{
return $this->hasMany(Follow::class, 'user_id')
->join('users', 'users.id', '=', 'follows.following_id')
->select('user_id','username');
}