Correct relationship in Laravel - laravel-4

Question

I have four tables in database: groups, specialties, lessons, group_lesson. It's structures:
groups
id
specialty_id
name
specialties
id
name
lessons
id
specialty_id
group_lesson (UNIQUE INDEX lesson_id, group_id)
lesson_id
group_id
date
My models look like that for now:
class Group extends Eloquent {
public function specialty() {
return $this->belongsTo('Specialty');
}
}
class Lesson extends Eloquent {
public function specialty() {
return $this->belongsTo('Specialty');
}
}
class Specialty extends Eloquent {
public function lessons() {
return $this->hasMany('Lesson');
}
public function groups() {
return $this->hasMany('Group');
}
}
I need get additional fields in Group model look like that
Group - Eloquent model
name - string
lessons - collection of Lesson models of Group Specialty
date - date from group_lesson table
I've tried different relationships and combinations, but it's doesn't work. Please help me to write correct relationships.

Answer 1

You can use eager-loading to access relational data through relationships, and can even chain relationships further. As a rule of thumb, if you can draw a path to from 1 model to another through a relationship, you can eagerload all the relevant and relational data for that with chained eager-loads.
Laravel Eager Loading
As an example
$speciality_group = Speciality::with('group','lessons')->find($id);
Even though you are only getting a single instance of the speciality model, the related data is hasMany, meaning multiple records. You need to loop through these records using a foreach loop to access the relevant data for them, or alternitavely add additional closures in your initial query to load only a single related model.
foreach($speciality_group->group as $group)
{
echo $group->name;
}
You will need to do this for both instances where you want to display related information.