Laravel Eloquent: eager loading of multiple nested relationships

Question

What laravel says:

$books = App\Book::with('author.contacts')->get();

What I need is something like this

$books = App\Book::with('author[contacts,publishers]')->get();

where we eager load multiple relationships within a relationship.

Is this possible?

Inwardness

Answer 1

You can do

 $books = App\Book::with('author.contacts','author.publishers')->get();

Shuttlecock

just to add, it will fetch the corresponding author data as well ofcourse. – Osswald

Follow-up: I have a much more complex model and want to return a single collection, but like the original poster, wish I could use multiple nested relationships at a lower child level like $event = event::with(['streams.experiences.selectors.['digitalprops.frames','filters']','streams.datacaptures'])->find($eventcode); – Declarer

@Declarer How do you execute this code in Laravel? $event = event::with(['streams.experiences.selectors.['digitalprops.frames','filters']','streams.datacaptures'])->find($eventcode);. It shouldn't work...! – Intricate

Right @Intricate -- I said I WISH I could... sorry for the confusion. – Declarer

does author is table name or what? – Butterwort

@msbomrel, author is a relationship method in the Book class – Contracture

Answer 2

Laravel documentation on eager loading recommends listing the relationships in an array as follows:

$books = App\Book::with(['author.contacts', 'author.publishers'])->get();

You can have as many relationships as desired. You can also specify which columns should be included for a relationship like this:

//only id, name and email will be returned for author
//id must always be included
$books = App\Book::with(['author: id, name, email', 'author.contacts', 'author.publishers'])->get();

You may also add constrains as follows:

$books = App\Book::with(['author: id, name, email', 'author.contacts' => function ($query) {
                                          $query->where('address', 'like', '%city%');
                                     }, 'author.publishers'])->get();

Contracture

This is the best overview how to eager load efficiently! – Neuron

This looks amazing! Thanks for your input! – Stantonstanway

Honestly! This is WAY better than Laravel's documentation. – Mayda

Answer 3

So, now you can try

$books = App\Book::with(['author' => function($author){
     $author->with(['contacts', 'publishers'])->get();
}])->get();

Odoric

I think that ->get() is not needed at all within the closure – Parker

Answer 4

From Laravel 9, the neatest way is the nested array :

$books = App\Book::with(['author' => [
             'contacts',
             'publishers'
         ])->get();

Reference

Cultivate

Answer 5

When eager load nested relationships and we want to select just some columns and not all using relationship:id,name, always include the foreign key to the nested models, else they won't load at all.

Fort example, we have orders that have identities that have addresses.

This will not load the address:

User::orders()
    ->with('identity:id,name', 'identity.address:id,street')

This will load the address because we have supplied the address_id foreign key:

User::orders()
    ->with('identity:id,address_id,name', 'identity.address:id,street')

Obed