Eloquent Model ID missmatch from join - laravel-4

Question

I have the following database schema:
Person 1 - 1 Contact 1 - * Address
There is also another entity that is a contact, therefore the table contact is necessary.
I access a list of persons like this:
$persons = Person::with('contact.addresses')
->filter($string)
->withoutCompany()
->orderBy('persons.surname', 'ASC')
->get();
The problem is that the eloquent model that is returned overwrites the id field of person with the id of the table contact. This is due to the query scope filter($string) which can be seen below:
public function scopeFilter($query, $parameter) {
return $query
->join('contacts', 'persons.contact_id', '=', 'contacts.id')
->join('addresses', 'addresses.contact_id', '=', 'contacts.id')
->where(function($q) use($parameter) {
$q->where('addresses.city', 'like', $parameter)
->orWhere('persons.surname', 'like', '%' . $parameter . '%')
->orWhere('persons.name', 'like', '%' . $parameter . '%')
->orWhere('addresses.postcode', 'like', $parameter . '%');
});
}
public function scopeWithoutCompany($query) {
return $query->whereRaw('persons.id not in (select company_person.person_id from company_person)');
}
This problem is already addressed here
It states that a select statement should be used, because if the same column name is selected several times, the last one will overwrite the precedents when using joins to fill an eloquent model.
But when I use a select statement in a query scope, e.g. selecting only persons.* and addresses.* - I get an Cardinality violation: 1241 Operand should contain 23 column(s) error from another model where I use the scope in an eager loading constraint (Person and Address together have 23 columns).
I fixed this problem by an ugly workaround, joining again on the Persons table as a last join to overwrite the id with the person id. But this can't be the solution to my problem. Has anyone any idea how I can solve this?
This is the workaround from my Person::filter($string) query scope:
return $query
->select(array('persons.*', 'addresses.*'))
->join('contacts', 'persons.contact_id', '=', 'contacts.id')
->join('addresses', 'addresses.contact_id', '=', 'contacts.id')
->join('persons as p', 'p.id', '=', 'persons.id')
->where(function($q) use($parameter) {
$q->where('addresses.city', 'like', $parameter)
->orWhere('persons.surname', 'like', '%' . $parameter . '%')
->orWhere('persons.name', 'like', '%' . $parameter . '%')
->orWhere('addresses.postcode', 'like', $parameter . '%');
});
For reference:
This is the code that results in the cardinality violation error (database sehcma is Company * - * Person):
$companies = Company::with(array('persons' => function($q) use ($string)
{
$q->filter($string);
})
)->whereHas('persons', function($q) use ($string)
{
$q->filter($string);
})
->orderBy('name', 'ASC')
->get();

Answer 1

Thanks to user Kindari at Laravel.io I have a solution now.
I am not directly putting a condition on my address table, but I have the where clauses in a query scope within my Address model.
Within my Persn model in the query scope, I first retrieve all relevant addresses. I put the IDs in a list and restrict my Persons to only those that live at the addresses. With that I have one more query but have no join at all. See the solution below
public function scopeFilter($query, $parameter) {
$contact_ids = Address::filter($parameter)->lists('contact_id');
$query->with('contact')
->where(function($q) use ($parameter, $contact_ids) {
$q->where('persons.surname', 'like', '%' . $parameter . '%')
->orWhere('persons.name', 'like', '%' . $parameter . '%');
if($contact_ids) {
$q->orWhereIn('contact_id', $contact_ids);
}
});
return $query;
}
This part
$q->where('addresses.city', 'like', $parameter)
->orWhere('addresses.postcode', 'like', $parameter . '%');
is now part of the query scope of the Address model.
Nicely encapsulated. I don't know why I did not think about that one. I was somehow focusing on putting it all in one query. This solves my problem.