How to Fetch Chat Data Using Eloquent with Joins in Laravel 11?

How to Fetch Chat Data Using Eloquent with Joins in Laravel 11?

To fetch chat data using Eloquent with joins in Laravel 11, you can follow the steps below:

1. Define the relationships between the models involved in the chat data.

Assuming you have three models: User, Chat, and Message. A user can have many chats, and a chat can have many messages.

In User.php:

public function chats()
{
    return $this->hasMany(Chat::class);
}

In Chat.php:

public function user()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
}

public function messages()
{
    return $this->hasMany(Message::class);
}

In Message.php:

public function chat()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(Chat::class);
}

public function sender()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'sender_id');
}

2. Fetch the chat data with joined messages using Eloquent.

$user = User::with(['chats.messages' => function ($query) {
    $query->select('id', 'message', 'created_at');
}])->find(1);

$chats = $user->chats;

foreach ($chats as $chat) {
    echo "Chat with user " . $chat->user->name . ":\n";

    foreach ($chat->messages as $message) {
        echo "- Message from " . ($message->sender->name) . ": " . $message->message . " (" . $message->created_at->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . ")\n";
    }
}

In this example, we're fetching the user with their related chats and messages using eager loading. The select method is used to only fetch the necessary columns from the messages table to minimize the number of queries.

The output will be a list of chats with their corresponding messages.