Accessing an item from a key value pair object derived from a parent relationship

Question

I am trying to implement a created_by column in my users' table.

I created a migration file to add the new column to the users' table:

    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->unsignedInteger('created_by')->default(0);
        });
    }

I have a User model which has the following relationships:

    public function roles()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Role::class);
    }

    public function createdBy()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo(self::class, 'created_by');
    }

In the UsersController, I have this method:

    public function view($id)
    {
        $user = User::with(['roles', 'createdBy'])->where('created_by', Auth::id())->find($id);
        return $user;
    }

When I return the user variable, I get this result:

Now, I want to access the value from "email" in "created_by". I tried to do this:

return $user->created_by

What I'm getting is 2 but what I want to get is "[email protected]".

I also tried return $user->created_by->email but it returned an error since the result I'm getting from return $user->created_by is just a number.

I want to fetch the email value "[email protected]".

Answer 1

Please change the createdBy relationship function with the createdByUser.

here we just change the function name to avoid conflict between column name and relationship name.

public function createdByUser()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(self::class, 'created_by');
}

so now, you can access like

$user->createdByUser->email

Answer 2

According to your JSON response this should work:

$user[0]->created_by->email