Eloquent Has Many Through from same table

Question

I have some tables like these:

users, followers_pivot, activities

In my User model, all relations are set and working correctly.

Some methods from my User.php model:

class User extends Eloquent {

    //The ones I follow
    public function imFollowing() {
        return $this->belongsToMany('User', 'followers_pivot', 'follower_id', 'followee_id');
    }

    //The people who's following me
    public function followers() {
        return $this->belongsToMany('User', 'followers_pivot', 'followee_id', 'follower_id');
    }

    //shows all activities of the user
    public function activities() {
        return $this->hasMany('Activity', 'userID');
    }
}

I want to fetch activities of everyone I'm following.

I can fetch this way:

User::with('imFollowing.activities')->find(11);

But, it's not enough. They are under imFollowing collection, and separated by each user.

I want to fetch activities directly and not separated under imFollowings.

I thought of a Has-Many-Through relationship, but I couldn't put it together.

This is what I've tried using hasManyThrough:

//User.php Model
public function activityFeed() {
    return $this->hasManyThrough('Activity', 'User', 'id', 'userID');
}

And

//in a route
return User::with('activityFeed')->find(11);

But this returns the collection null.

Edit: I can do this using Fluent way:

Activity::join('users', 'activities.userID', '=', 'users.id', 'inner')
    ->join('followers_pivot', 'followers_pivot.followee_id', '=', 'users.id', 'inner')
    ->where('followers_pivot.follower_id', 11)
    ->orderBy('activities.id', 'desc')
    ->select('activities.*')
    ->get();

How can I achieve this using Eloquent? This will be only place where I'll be using Fluent, and I'm not quite satisfied with it. Is the polymorphic approach better for this? If so, how?

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

I was also having the same doubt. As this is the first google answer I will post the answer here:

As explained here Has many through self referencing in laravel returns empty set

It's not a HasManyThrough relationship, it's a BelongsToMany relationship!