Laravel Eloquent One-To-One target works as property but not function

Question

I setup the user - phone relationship explained in the laravel docs here:

https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/eloquent-relationships

    $user=Auth::user();
    $phone = $user->phone;

    var_dump($phone->toArray());

This worked fine, and displayed the phone data from the database.

What I don't understand is why I am using $user->phone instead of $user->phone().

From the docs, my user model contains this function:

public function phone()
{
    return $this->hasOne('App\Phone');
}

But when I try to access $user->phone()->toArray(), it throws an error that the method is not found.

Why am I accessing phone as a property and not a function? Is it possible to use the function instead? My IDE does not recognize a phone attribute for $user, only the phone() function.

how about $phone = $user->phone()->get(); then $array = (array) $phone; dd($array); — claudios
$user->phone() will return you an Eloquent relation, from which you can chain query builder functions. $user->phone returns you the the relation instance, which is an Eloquent model. — fubar

EddyTheDove EddyTheDove · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-15T05:47:20

Using brackets will return a query builder instance. This is usually more helpful for direct manipulation, for instance, if a user has many phones (I know in your case it's only one phone)

$activePhone = $user->phones()->where('status', 'active')->first(); 
//returns the first phone number with an active status

toArray() is not a member of query builder, thus, it won't work with

$user->phone()->toArray();

Laravel Eloquent One-To-One target works as property but not function

2 Answers