How to get relationship with union in eloquent? - laravel

Question

How can I make relationship with union in laravel eloquent? I've already tried two different approaches.
User::with(['url' => function($query) use(&$some_property) {
$favouriteUrls = \DB::table('urls')
->select('urls.*')
->join('favourite_urls', function($join) {
$join->on('favourite_urls.url_id', '=', 'urls.id');
})
->where('some_condition', '=', $some_property);
$query = $query->union($favouriteUrls);
}]);
In the first attempt there wasn't any union in the query. Then I tried to move the logic to the model.
class User extends \Eloquent {
public function urls() {
$favouriteUrls = \DB::table('urls')
->select('urls.*')
->join('favourite_urls', function($join) {
$join->on('favourite_urls.url_id', '=', 'urls.id');
})
->where('some_condition', '=', $this->some_property);
return $this->belongsTo('Url')->union($favouriteUrls);
}
}
It has executed successfully but $this->some_property was set inside the query to the null value.
I can't create two separate relationship in this case. It has to be one with union. How can I fix it?

Answer 1

If you call that relation as User::with('urls') you will get that $this->some_property doesn't exists, because the object itself doesn't exists. But if you call the urls() method on an object, it should work. Something like this:
$user = User::find(1);
$user->urls; // here $this->some_property should have a value
Assuming you're calling the urls() method from a User object, the $this->some_property should give you the value. If for some reason you cannot access a property directly on an Eloquent model you can always refer to the attributes[] array inside of the model. For example
// calling
$this->some_property
// should be the same as
$this->attributes['some_property']
Fetch all the users joining with the condition
Assuming users is the table for all the users, in your query you could change $this->some_property with 'users.some_property' and everything should work as expected, for each user it will query based on that property. Here is the code:
class User extends \Eloquent {
public function urls() {
$favouriteUrls = \DB::table('urls')
->select('urls.*')
->join('favourite_urls', function($join) {
$join->on('favourite_urls.url_id', '=', 'urls.id');
})
->where('some_condition', '=', 'users.some_property');
return $this->belongsTo('Url')->union($favouriteUrls);
}
}
And then just call the method like this:
User::with('urls')->get();